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“He was very diplomatic in his undertaking”

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1920, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE GORGEOUS GIRL

3

THE GORGEOUS GIRL

CHAPTER I

“Before long two bank accounts will beat as one,” Trudy said to Mary Faithful. “Tra-la-la-la-la,“ humming the wedding march while the office force of the O’Valley Leather Company listened with expressions ranging from grins to frowns.

“Sh-h-h! Mr. O’Valley has just opened his door.” As she was private secretary and general guardian to Steve O’Valley, president of the concern, Miss Faithful’s word usually had a decisive effect.

But Trudy was irrepressible. Besides boarding at the Faithful home and thus enjoying a certain intimacy with Mary, she was one of those young persons who holds a position merely as a means to an end––the sort who dresses to impress everyone, from the president of the concern if he is in the matrimonial or romantic market to the elevator boy if said elevator boy happens to have a bank account capable of taking one to all the musical shows and to supper afterward. Having been by turns a milliner’s apprentice, assistant in a beauty parlour, and cashier in a business men’s restaurant, Truletta Burrows had acquired a certain chicness enabling her to twist a remnant of chiffon or straw into a creation and wear it in impressive contrast with her baby-blue eyes and 4 Titian-red hair. In the majority of cases where a girl has neither family nor finances she must seek a business situation in order to win a husband. Trudy went after her game in no hesitating manner.

She had no intention of becoming one of the multitude of commercial nuns who inhabit the United States of America this day––quiet women with quick eyes, a trifle cold or pensive if analyzed, severely combed hair, trim tailor suits and mannish blouses with dazzling neckties as their bit of vanity––the type that often shoulders half the responsibility of the firm. Whether achieving a private office and a nervous stenographer who is disappointed at having a lady boss is to be preferred to a house-and-garden career is, like all vital issues, a question for debate.

Neither did Trudy propose to shrivel into a timid, slave-like type of person kept on the pay roll from pity or by reason of the fact that initiating a novice would be troublesome. Such a one was Miss Nellie Lunk, who sat in a corner of the hall making out requisition slips and taking care of unwelcome visitors––a pathetic figure with faded eyes and scraggly hair, always keeping a posy on her old-style desk and crocheting whenever there was a lull in work. Thirty years in business was Miss Lunk’s record, twenty-five in Mark Constantine’s office and five in the employ of Mr. O’Valley, that lovable, piratical Irishman who achieved his success by being a brilliant opportunist and who, it would seem, ran a shoestring into a fortune by a wink of his blue eyes.

Trudy knew that Miss Lunk lived alone––the third story back, where she cooked most of her meals, while a forlorn canary cheeped a welcome. She possessed a little talking machine with sentimental records, and 5 on Sundays she went to a cafeteria for a good, hearty meal unless cousins asked her to their establishment. Some day Miss Lunk would find herself in a home with other no longer useful old people and here she would stay with her few keepsakes, of which the world knew nothing and cared less, the cousins dropping in at intervals to impress upon her how carefree and fortunate she was!

In conclusion Trudy had decided not to accept the third choice of the modern business woman, which, she decided, was Mary Faithful’s fate––to give your heart to a man who never had thought of you and never would think of you as other than a reliable and agreeable machine; as someone––should Florida and a certain Gorgeous Girl named Beatrice Constantine beckon––who would say:

“Yes, Mr. O’Valley, I understand what to do. I arranged the New Haven sale this morning. You were at the jewellery store to see about Miss Constantine’s ring. So I long-distanced Martin & Newman and put it through. If the ring is sent in your absence I know what you have ordered and can return it if it does not comply with instructions––platinum set with diamonds, three large stones of a carat each and the twenty smaller stones surrounding them. And a king’s-blue velvet case with her initials in platinum. And you want me to discharge Dundee and divide up his work. Yes, I gave the janitor the gold piece for finding your pet cane. I’ll wire you every day.”

And Steve O’Valley had swung jauntily out of the office, secure in his secretary’s ability to meet any crisis, to have to work alone in the almost garish office apparently quite content that she was not going 6 to Florida, too. Trudy’s imagination pictured there a someone petulant, spoiled, and altogether irresistible in the laciest of white frocks and a leghorn hat with pink streamers, at whose feet Steve O’Valley offered some surprise gift worth months of Mary Faithful’s salary while he said: “I ran away from work to play with you, Gorgeous Girl! See how you demoralize me? Even your father frowned when I said I was coming. How are you, darling? I don’t give a hang if I make poor Miss Faithful run the shop for a year as long as you want me to play with you.”

Having the advantage of studying Mary Faithful’s position both from the business and family aspects Trudy had long ago decided that she was not going to be like her. In no way did she envy Mary’s position.

Since her dreamer of a father had died and left dependent upon her her four-year-old brother and a mother whose chief concern in life was to have the smartest-looking window curtains in the neighbourhood, Mary went to work at thirteen with a remnant of an education. Possessions spelled happiness to Mrs. Faithful; poetical dreams had been Mr. Faithful’s chief concern, and as an unexpected consequence their first child had been endowed with common sense. With Mary at the wheel there had been just enough to get along with, so they stayed on in the old-fashioned house while Mrs. Faithful bewailed Mary’s having to work for a living and not be a lady, as she could have been if her father had had any judgment.

Mrs. Faithful had become quite happy in her martyrdom as she was still able to maintain the starched window curtains. After a conventional period of mourning she began to relive the past, her 7 husband’s mistakes, her own girlhood and offers of marriage––such incidents as these sufficed to keep her from enjoying the present, while Mary rose from errand girl to grocery clerk, with night school as a recreation, from grocery clerk to filing clerk, assistant bookkeeper, bookkeeper, stenographer, and finally private secretary to Steve O’Valley, one of the war-fortune kings. And she had given her heart to him in the same loyal way she had always given her services.

At home Trudy noted that Mary worked round the house because she liked the change from office routine, deaf to the complaining maternal voice reciting past glories in which Mary had no part. If the parlour furniture with its tidies and a Rogers group in the front window sometimes got on her nerves she forced herself to laugh over it and say: “It’s mother’s house, and all she has.” She concerned herself far more with Luke, an active, fair-to-middling American boy somewhat inclined to be spoiled. Mary had taken Luke into the office after school hours to keep a weather eye on him and make him contribute a stipend to the expenses.

“If a man won’t work he should not eat,” she informed him as she proportioned his wage.

Recalling Mary’s position at home––though Trudy rejoiced in her own front room and the comforts of the household––she shrugged her shoulders in disapproval. Certainly she could never endure the same lot in life. For if one man will not love you why waste time bewailing the fact? Find another. Mary could have had other suitors. Mr. Tompkins, the city salesman, and young Elias, of Elias & Son, had both made brave attempts to plead their cause, 8 only to be treated in the same firm manner that Luke was treated when he hinted of making off to sea.

“She’ll spend her life loving Steve O’Valley and slaving for him,” Trudy had confided to her dozen intimate friends, who never repeated anything told them. “And he will spend his life being trampled on by Beatrice Constantine, and after they are married she will be meaner than ever to him. But he will love her all the more. Honest, business men make the grandest husbands! College professors are lots harder to get along with––but business men are as cross as two sticks in their offices and at home they’re so sweet it would melt pig iron.”

The first plank in Trudy’s platform was to marry a business man as nearly like Steve O’Valley as possible. The second was––whether or not she had a stunning home with brick fireplaces––never to spend her days hanging round them. Her most envied friend lived in New York, and her life was just one roof garden after another. She had everything heart could desire––Oriental rugs, a grandfather’s clock, a mechanical piano, bird-of-paradise sprays for her hat, a sealskin ulster, and plenty of alimony. And in case said business man proved unsatisfactory Trudy had resolved to exchange him for unlimited legal support at the earliest possible opportunity.

But she would not trespass upon Mary’s platform, which consisted of loving Steve O’Valley yet knowing of his love for the Gorgeous Girl, as Mark Constantine had named his daughter. And of course Mary must have realized that though she might earn three thousand a year as private secretary she would eternally lock her desk at six o’clock and trudge home to her mother and the starched window curtains, 9 watch Luke fall in love and scorn her advice, wash her hemstitched ruffles and black her boots, and keep her secret as she grew older and plainer of face!

Trudy often tried to decide just how handsome and how plain Mary was; it was a matter for argument because the expression of Mary Faithful’s eyes largely determined her charm. She was a sober young person with thick braids of brown hair and surprising niceties of dress, sensible shoes, a frill of real lace on her serge dress, no hint of perfume, no attempt at wearing party attire for business as the rest of the staff not only attempted but unfortunately achieved. She had honest gray eyes, the prophecy of true greatness in her face with its flexible mouth and prominent cheek bones, the sort of woman who would be the mother of great men, tall and angular in build and walking with an athletic stride offset by a feminine cry-baby chin and the usual mediocre allotment of freckles on the usual mediocre nose! Mary Faithful was not pretty; she was a “good-looking thing,” Trudy would usually conclude, glancing in a near-by mirror to approve of the way her fluff of pink tulle harmonized with her pink camisole under the tissue-paper bodice.

Indulging in one of these reveries Trudy suddenly realized that she had not added the checks on her desk. She went to work disdainfully, first feeling of her skirt and waist at the back, slipping a caramel in her mouth, and making eyes at a clerk who passed her desk.

Mary came out of her office and stopped before Trudy accusingly. “I’ve been waiting for these,” she said.

“It’s so grand out to-day––look at that sunshine! 10 May’s the hardest month of the year to work; you just can’t help planning your summer clothes.”

“Miss Constantine is coming to call for Mr. O’Valley and I want his O. K. on those before he gets away.”

“Listen, don’t you think the diamonds he is buying her are vulgar? A bunch of electric bulbs is what I call it, I certainly would not permit–––”

Mary’s pencil tapped authoritatively on the desk, then she signed an order someone brought her.

“Are they going to be married at high noon in church?”

“Yes––June the first.”

“Lucky girl! She’s older than me; everyone says so. It’s only her money and clothes that has built her up. I don’t think she’s so much. Her nose is as flat as a pancake and she rouges something fierce. I saw them at the theatre and I certainly was–––”

Mary took the checks out of Trudy’s hand and walked away. Undecided as to her course of action Trudy hummed a few bars of “Moving Man, Don’t Take My Baby Grand” and then followed Mary into her office.

Mary added up the checks without glancing at her caller. Then she said sharply: “I cannot pay out someone else’s money for work that is not done.”

“Don’t get a grouch on; it will spread through the whole plant. When you’re cross everybody’s cross.”

“Then do your work––for it isn’t much.” She could not help adding: “You think I can smooth over everything just because you board with me.”

Trudy giggled. “It’s the wedding in the air, and spring, and those diamonds! She never works, she never does anything but spend the money we make 11 for her. All she has is a good time, and what’s the use of living if you don’t have a good time? I’ll have it if I have to steal it. Oh, you needn’t look so horrified. Steve O’Valley almost stole his fortune just because he had to be a rich man before Constantine would let him marry his daughter. Anyway, I’d rather have a good time for a few years and then die than to live to be a hundred and never have an honest-to-goodness party. Wouldn’t you?”

“You’re foolish to-day. If you only wouldn’t wear such low-cut waists and talk to the men! Mr. O’Valley has noticed it.”

“I can get another job and another boarding house,” Trudy began, defiantly.

“You wouldn’t last out at either. You need this sort of a place and our sort of house, you ridiculous little thing. Besides, you have Gaylord at your beck and call”––Trudy blushed––“and you seem to manage to have a pretty good time when all is said and done. I do feel responsible for you because at twenty-three you are more scatterbrained than–––”

“Finish it––than you were at thirteen! Well, what of it? I’m out for a good time and you are always talking about the right time, I suppose. I’ll take your lecture without weeping and promise to reform. But don’t be surprised at anything I may do regarding tra-la-la-la-la.” She burst into the wedding march again and vanished, Mary shaking her head as she prepared to sign off some letters.

Steve O’Valley opened the door connecting their offices, displaying a face as happy as a schoolboy’s on a Christmas holiday. “Miss Constantine is downstairs, I’m going to escort her up,” he announced, shutting the door as abruptly as he had opened it.

12

Presently there came into Steve’s office someone who was saying in a light, gay voice: “Perfectly awful old place, Stevuns––as bad as papa’s. I hate business offices; make my head ache. It was Red Cross to-day, and after that I had to rush to cooking school–––”

Steve answered in rapt fashion: “I’ll have to talk to Miss Faithful for half a jiffy and then I’m free for the rest of the day–––” opening the door of Mary’s office and beckoning to her.

Coming into his office Mary nodded pleasantly at the Gorgeous Girl, who nodded pleasantly in return and settled herself in an easy-chair while Steve rehearsed the things to be attended to the following day since he was not to be at the office.

“I’m getting Miss Faithful ready to run the shop single-handed,” he explained, telling Mary details which she already knew better than he but to which she listened patiently, her twilight eyes glancing now at Beatrice and back again at Steve.

Outside the hum of commerce played the proper accompaniment to Steve O’Valley’s orders and Mary’s thoughts and Beatrice’s actions––a jangling yet accurate rhythm of typewriters and adding machines and office chatter, pencil sharpeners, windows being opened, shades adjusted, wastebaskets dragged into position, boys demanding their telegrams or delivering the same, phone bells ringing, voices asking for Mr. O’Valley and being told that he was not in, other voices asking for Miss Faithful and being told she was not at liberty just now––would they be seated? Trudy’s giggle rose above the hum at odd intervals, elevators crept up and down, and outside the spring air escorted the odour of hides and tallow and what not, grease and machine oil and general junk from across the courtyard; trucks rumbled on the cobblestones while workingmen laughed and quarrelled––a confusing symphony of the business world. While Steve hurriedly gave his orders Mary Faithful in almost the panoramic fashion of the drowning swiftly recalled the incidents of Steve’s life and of the Gorgeous Girl’s and her own as well, forcing herself mechanically to say yes and no in answer to his questions and to make an occasional notation.

“The Gorgeous Girl had never known anything but the most gorgeous side of life”

13

The panorama rather bewildered her; it was like being asked to describe a blizzard while still in it, whereas one should be sitting in a warm, cheery room looking impersonally at the storm swirl.

First of all, she thought of Steve O’Valley’s Irish grandfather, by like name, who spent his life in Virginia City trying to find a claim equal to the Comstock lode, dying penniless but with a prospector’s optimism that had he been permitted to live manana surely would have seen the turning of the tide. Old O’Valley’s only son and his son’s wife survived him until their ability to borrow was at an end and work would have been their only alternative. So they left a small, black-haired, blue-eyed young man named Stephen O’Valley to battle single-handed with the world and bring honour to his name.

The first twelve years of the battle were spent in an orphanage in the Grass Valley, the next four as a chore boy on a ranch, after which the young man decided with naïve determination that in order to obtain anything at all worth while he must be fully prepared to pay its price, and that he desired above all else to become a rich man––a truly rich man, and marry a fairy-princess sort of person. And as far as education was concerned he felt that if he was not 14 quite so brushed up on his A B C’s as he was on minding his P’s and Q’s the result would not be half bad. Unconsciously his attitude toward the world was a composite of the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, the cynical wisdom of Omar Khayyam, and plain and not to be duplicated Yankee pep.

As Steve planned it he was to leave his mark on the world and not endure the world’s mark upon himself. This straight-limbed and altogether too handsome youngster––his grandmother had been a Basque––possessed the same quality of the fortune hunter as his grandfather, only he did not propose to do his prospecting in the mines of Nevada. Following the general tactics of a Stone Age man––a belief in muscle and great initiative––Steve found himself at twenty-four in the city of Hanover and in the employ of Mark Constantine, a hide-and-leather magnate who was said to be like all hard-boiled eggs––impossible to beat. After Steve advanced to the top notch of his ability he discovered that the only reason he was not considered as a junior member of the firm was because he could not buy stock. At this same time Beatrice Constantine had become interested in him.

To her mind Steve was different in other ways than merely being handsome and possessed of physical strength. And she considered that if he had a fortune he would be far more wonderful than any of the young gentlemen of her set who wondered which would be the lucky chap to lead Constantine’s Gorgeous Girl to the wedding-license bureau.

In the seventeen-year-old patronizing fashion of a Gorgeous Girl she permitted Steve to see that she was interested, and Steve with the romance of his Basque 15 grandmother and the audacity of his Irish grandfather immediately thought of what a strange and wonderful thing it would be if he could by hook or crook become a rich man all in the twinkling of an eye, and marry this superior, elegant little person.

The Gorgeous Girl had never known anything but the most gorgeous side of life. Her father, self-made from a boyhood as poor as Steve’s, carved his way to the top without delay or remorse for any one he may have halted or harmed in the so doing. He had wisely married a working girl whom he loved in undemonstrative fashion, and when at the turning point of his career she bore him a daughter and then died he erected an expensive monument to her memory and took his oath that their daughter should be the most gorgeous girl in Hanover and that her life should be spent in having as good a time as her father’s fortune allowed. He then invited his widowed sister to live with him and take charge of his child.

After this interlude he returned to his business grimmer of face and harsher of heart, and the world was none the wiser regarding his grief for the plain-faced woman in the churchyard. As his fortune multiplied almost ironically he would often take time to think of his wife Hannah, who was so tired of pots and pans and making dollars squeal so that he might succeed and who was now at rest with an imposing marble column to call attention to the fact.

So the Gorgeous Girl, as Hanover called her, half in ridicule and half in envy, developed into a gorgeous young woman, as might be expected with her father to pay her bills and her Aunt Belle to toddle meekly after her. Aunt Belle, once married to a carpenter 16 who had conveniently died, never ceased to rejoice in her good fortune. She was never really quite used to the luxury that had come to her instead of to the woman in the churchyard. She revelled in Beatrice’s clothes, her own elaborate costumes, ordered the servants about, went to Florida and the Bermudas whenever the Gorgeous Girl saw fit, rolled about the country in limousines, and secretly admired the hideous mansion Constantine had built––an ornate, overbearing brick affair with curlicue trimmings and a tower with a handful of minor turrets. It was furnished according to the dictates of a New York decorator, though Constantine added several large pieces of village colour after the decorator had pronounced his work as ended.

Hannah had always planned for a red-velvet cozy corner, and Constantine didn’t give a dozen damns if they were out of date––a red velvet cozy corner was going to be installed in the blue drawing room. A Swiss music box was another thing Hannah had hankered after––spoken of just before she died––so the Swiss music box was given a place of honour beside the residence pipe organ, and likewise some draperies with plush tassels. The decorator, having his check, did not attempt to argue, since his clientele were not apt to stop off at Hanover and discover the crime.

Aunt Belle saw that Beatrice had a governess, a dancing teacher, more party frocks than any other little girl in Hanover, and later on a French maid and other accessories necessary to being a Gorgeous Girl. In reality a parasitical little snob, hopelessly self-indulged, though originally kind-hearted and rather clever; and utterly useless but unconscious of the fact. She was sent to a finishing school, after which she 17 thought it would be more fun to go abroad to another finishing school and study music and art, travelling summers instead of having a formal début. Most of her chums were doing this and so she went with them. The red velvet cozy corner and the music box and so on disappeared immediately upon her first return visit. Likewise Beatrice succeeded finally in dissuading Aunt Belle from wearing her jewellery while travelling, though that outspoken lady never could refrain from vivid descriptions of it to her fellow passengers.

After the European sojourn the Gorgeous Girl went in for Hanover society and proved herself a valuable asset. She was nearly twenty-four, almost as slight of figure as a child, as dainty as Watteau’s most delicate imaginings, with tiny, nondescript features, lovely sunshine hair, and big dove-coloured eyes with pale-gold lashes. Meantime, the question of a husband for this lovely young person was before the household. She had had a dozen offers of marriage but accepted none of them because she had plenty of time and loads of money and she wanted to make the best of her unencumbered youth as long as possible. Besides, it was now considered great fun to go in for charities, she was ever so busy serving on committees, she never had a moment for herself, and it would take months to plan a trousseau and a wedding and decide about her house. Most important of all was the fact that when she was about to go to the French finishing school she had told Steve O’Valley that if he did not come to her farewell party she would be quite hurt. She felt he did not appreciate the honour in having been asked.

Steve, who would have lain down and let her walk 18 over him roughshod, said simply: “But I’m poor. I’m not in a position to meet your friends.”

“Then be rich––and I’ll ask you again,” she challenged.

“If I were a rich man––would you let me try?”

“See if I wouldn’t.” And she disappeared before he realized she had practically said yes.

Characteristically Steve lost no time. He went to her father the day after she had sailed, having sent her a veritable washtub of flowers for bon voyage––and said briefly: “I have loved your daughter ever since I first saw her. I’m as poor as you were once, but if I see my way to making a fortune and can give her everything she ought to have will you oppose my efforts to make her marry me?”

The daring of the thing pleased Constantine to the point of saying: “Do you want a loan, O’Valley? I think you’ll make good. Then it’s up to my daughter; she knows whom she wants to marry better than I do. You’re a decent sort––her mother would have liked you.”

“I don’t want a loan just yet. I want to make her marry me because I have made my own money and can take care of my own wife. I’m just asking you not to interfere if I do win out. I’ve saved a little––I’m going to take a plunge in stocks and draw out before it’s too late. Then I’m going into business if I can; but I’ll have to try my luck gambling before I do. When I hang out my shingle I may ask you to help––a little. Self-made men of to-day are made on paper––not by splitting logs or teaching school in the backwoods in order to buy a dictionary and law books––we haven’t the time for that. So I’ll take my chances and you’ll hear from me later.”

19

While Beatrice was skimming through school and taking walking trips through Norway punctuated by fleeting visits home, remaining as childish and unconcerned as to vital things as her mother had been at fourteen, Steve left the Constantine factory and took the plunge.

Good luck favoured him, and for five golden years he continued to rise in the financial world, causing his rivals to say: “A fool’s luck first then the war made him––the government contracts, you know. He’s only succeeded because of luck and the fact of it’s being the psychological moment. Worked in the ordnance game––didn’t see active service––money just kept rolling in. Well, who wants a war fortune? Some folks in 1860 bought government mules for limousine prices and sold them for the same. Besides, it’s only so he can marry the Gorgeous Girl. I guess he’ll find out it was cheap at half the price!”

While talk ran riot Steve’s fortune multiplied with almost sinister speed. He learned that flattery and ridicule were the best weapons known to man. And while the Gorgeous Girl flew home at the first war cloud to bury herself in serious war activities Steve climbed the upward path and never once glanced backward lest he grow dizzy.

At thirty-two, in the year 1919, he was able to say to Mark Constantine, in the fashion of a fairy-story hero: “I still love your daughter, sir, and I’ve made my fortune. We want to be married. Your blessing, please.” And to himself: “I’ll show the worst side of me to the world so wolves won’t come and steal my precious gold that I had to have in order to win her; and I’ll show my best side to the woman I love, and that’s fair enough!”

20

With surprising accuracy Mary Faithful’s keen mind, aided by a tender heart, had pieced this mosaic business and love story together, and as she finished the panorama she glanced at the Gorgeous Girl in her mink dolman and bright red straw hat, the useless knitting bag on her arm, and Steve’s engagement ring blazing away on her finger, and she sighed unconsciously.

“Don’t tell Miss Faithful any more,” Beatrice protested. “I’m sure she knows about everything, and it’s late––I’m tired.”

“All right, lady fair. That’s all, Miss Faithful. Good-night,” Steve dismissed her abruptly.

As Mary left the room he was saying tenderly: “What did you do at cooking school?”

And the Gorgeous Girl was answering: “We made pistachio fondant; and next week it will be Scotch broth. It takes an hour to assemble the vegetables and I dread it. Only half the class were there, the rest were at Miss Harper’s classical-dancing lesson. That’s fun, too. I think I’ll take it up next year. I was just thinking how glad I am papa built the big apartment house five years ago; it’s so much nicer to begin housekeeping there instead of a big place of one’s own. It’s such work to have a house on your hands. Are you ready?”

“Hold on. Don’t I deserve a single kiss?... Thank you, Mrs. O’Valley.” Then the door closed.

Mary Faithful picked up her notations. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that no one should ever have reason to guess her secret. If all honest men steal umbrellas and kisses, so do all honest women fib as to the size of their shoes and the person they love best of all the world!

21

CHAPTER II

Sunday was a much-dreaded day in Mary’s calendar, partly because she surrendered herself to the maternal monologue of how dreadful it was to have a daughter in business and not a lady in a home of her own, and partly because she missed the office routine and the magical stimulation of Steve’s presence. Besides, Trudy was a thorn in Mary’s flesh and on Sundays the thorn had a chance to assert herself in particularly unendurable fashion.

For instance––the Sunday morning following the Gorgeous Girl’s visit to Steve’s office Trudy unwillingly dragged herself downstairs at half-past ten in a faded, bescrolled kimono over careless lingerie, her hair bundled under a partially soiled boudoir cap, and her feet flopping along in tattered silk slippers.

“Oh, dear, it’s Sunday again,” she began. “Goodness me, Mary, I’d hate to be as good as you are––always up and smiling! Why don’t you have a permanent smile put on your face? It would be lots easier.”

At which joke Luke giggled, and Mrs. Faithful, ensconced in a large rocker behind the starched curtains so that nothing passing on the street could escape her eagle, melancholy eye, nodded approval and added: “I should think Mary would lie abed the one morning she could. But no, she gets Luke up no matter what the weather is, and flies round like a house afire. When I was in my father’s house I 22 never had to lift a finger. Trudy, I wish you could have seen my bedroom. I had a mahogany four-poster bed with white draperies, and a dresser to match the bed, and my father bought me a silver toilet set when he was in Lexington, Kentucky, one time. He used to go there to sell horses. I remember one time I went with him and if I do say so I was much admired.

“I rode horseback those days and I had a dappled-gray pony named Pet, and everyone said it was just like looking at a picture to see me go prancing by. Of course I never thought about it. I wore a black velvet riding habit with a long train and a black velvet hat with a white plume just floating behind, and I had white gauntlets, too.

“Mary, Trudy wants her coffee. Hot cakes? Oh, pshaw, they won’t hurt you a mite. I was raised on ’em. I guess I’ll have another plateful, Mary, while you’re frying ’em. I’m so comfortable I hate to get up.... You poor little girls having to go out and hustle all week long and not half appreciated! Never mind, some Prince Charming will come and carry you off sometime.” Whereat she waddled to the table to wait for the hot cakes to arrive.

Mrs. Faithful had pepper-and-salt-coloured hair and small dark eyes that snapped like an angry bird’s, and a huge double chin. Her nondescript shape resolved itself into a high, peaked lap over which, when not eating hot cakes, her stubby hands seemed eternally clasped.

“Mary takes after her pa, poor child,” she had told Trudy confidentially. “Lean and lank as a clothes pole! And those gray eyes that look you straight through. I wish she didn’t think so much of the 23 office and would get a nice young man. I’d like to know what it is in those books she finds so fascinating. Can you tell me? I tried to read Omar Canine myself but it was too much for me.”

“I’m no highbrow,” Trudy had laughed. “Mary is; and a fine girl, besides,” she had added, resentfully.

With all Trudy’s shallow nature and shrewd selfishness she was as fond of Mary as she was capable of being fond of any one. Besides, it was more comfortable to be a member of the Faithful household for nine dollars a week and be allowed hot cakes and sirup à la kimono on Sunday morning; to have Gaylord Vondeplosshe, her friend, frequent the parlour at will; to use the telephone and laundry, and to occupy the best room in the house than to have to tuck into a room similar to Miss Lunk’s––and she was truly grateful to Mary for having taken her in. She felt that Mrs. Faithful underestimated her man of the family.

Mary at the present time earned forty dollars a week. Out of this she supported her family and saved a little. At regular intervals she tried persuading her mother to leave the old-fashioned house and move into a modern apartment, which would give her the opportunity of dispensing with Trudy as a boarder. But her mother liked Trudy, with her airs and graces, her beaux, her startling frocks. Trudy was company; Mary was not. She was the breadwinner and a wonderful daughter, as Mrs. Faithful always said when callers mentioned her. But the mother had never been friends with her children nor with their father. So Mary had grown up accustomed to work and loneliness; and, most important of all, accustomed to considering everyone else first 24 and herself last. It was Mary who saw beneath the boisterousness of Luke’s boy nature and spied the good therein, trying to develop it as best she could. Aside from Luke and her business she found amusement in her dream life of loving Steve O’Valley and vicariously sharing his joys and sorrows, safeguarding his interests.

She had told herself four years ago: “You clumsy, thin business woman––the idea of halfway dreaming that such a man as Steve would ever love you! Of course he’s intended for the Gorgeous Girl; the very law of opposites makes him care for her––pretty, useless doll. So take your joy in being his business partner, because the Gorgeous Girl can never share the partnership any more than you could share his name; and there’s a heap of comfort in being of some use.”

After which self-inflicted homily Mary had set to work and followed her own advice. She had discovered very shortly that there were many things to enjoy and be thankful for.

As soon as she was able Mary had refurnished her father’s study and taken it for her own. Here she made out household bills, lectured Luke, planned work, sewed, and read. It was a shabby, cheery room with a faded old carpet, an open fireplace, some easy-chairs, and a black-walnut secretary over which her father had dreamed his dreams. On the walls were stereotyped engravings such as Cherry Ripe and The Call to Arms, which Mrs. Faithful refused to part with; no one, herself included, ever knowing just why.

Mary also took herself to task in the little study in as impersonal a manner as a true father confessor. “You are twenty-six and growing set in your ways,” 25 she would mentally accuse––“always wanting a certain table at the café and a certain waitress. Old Maid! Must have your little French book to read away at as you munch your rolls and refuse to be sociable. Hermitess! And always buy chocolates and a London News on Saturday night. Getting so you fuss if you have square-topped hairpins instead of round, and letting milliners sell you any sort of hats because you are too busy to prink! Going to art galleries and concerts alone––and quite satisfied to do so. Now, please, Mary, try not to be so queer and horrid!” Followed by a one-sided debate as to whether or not these were normal symptoms of maturity, and if she were mistress of a house would she not entertain equally set notions regarding brands of soap, and so on?

“Office notions are not so nice as the frilly, cry-on-a-shoulder-when-the-biscuits-burn notions,” she would end, dolefully. “Fancy my tall self weeping on the superintendent’s shoulder because a cablegram has gone astray! Making women over into commercial nuns is a problem––some of us take it easily and don’t try to fight back, some of us fight and end defeated and bitter, and some of us don’t play the game but just our own hand––like Trudy. And what’s the square game for a commercial nun? That is what I’d like to know.”

She would then find herself dreaming of two distinct forks in the road, both of which might be possible for her but only one of which was probable. Each fork led to a feminine rainbow ending.

The more probable fork would resolve itself, a few years hence, into a trim suburban bungalow with a neat roadster to whisk her into business and whisk 26 her away from it. The frilly, cry-on-a-shoulder-when-the-biscuits-burn part of Mary would have long ago vanished, leaving the business woman quite serene and satisfied. She would find her happiness in mere things––in owning her home; in facing old age single-handed and knowing it would not bring the gray wolf; in helping Luke through college while her mother was in a comfy orthodox heaven with plenty of plates of hot cakes and dozens of starched window curtains; in rejoicing at some new possession for her living room, at her immaculate business costumes, new books, tickets for the opera season; in vacationing wherever she wished, sometimes with other commercial nuns and sometimes alone; in having that selfish, tempting freedom of time and lack of personal demands which permit a woman to be always well groomed and physically rested, and to take refuge in a sanitarium whenever business worries pressed too hard. To sum it up: it meant to sit on the curbstone––a nice, steam-heated, artistically furnished curbstone, to be sure, and have to watch the procession pass by.

The other fork in the road led to a shadowy rainbow since Mary knew so little concerning it. It comprised the exacting, unselfish role of having baby fingers tagging at her skirts and shutting her away from easy routines and lack of responsibility; of having a house to suit her family first and herself last; of growing old and tired with the younger things growing up and away from her, and the strong-shouldered man demanding to be mothered, after the fashion of all really strong-shouldered and successful men––requiring more of her patience and love than all the young things combined; of subordinating her 27 personality, perhaps her ideas, and most certainly her surface interests. To be that almost mystical relation, a wife; which includes far more than having Mrs. Stephen O’Valley––just for example––on a calling card.

To her lot would fall the task of always being there to welcome the strong man with tender joy when he has succeeded or to comfort him with equal tenderness when he has failed, and at all times spurring him to live up to the ideal his wife has set for him. To stay aloof from his work inasmuch as it would annoy him, yet to be adviser emeritus, whether the matter involved hiring a new sweeper-out or moving the whole plant to the end of the world. Someone who ministered to the needs of the strong man’s very soul in unsuspected, often unconscious and unthanked fashion; such a trifle as a rose-shaded lamp for tired eyes; a funny bundle of domestic happenings told cleverly to offset the jarring problems of commerce; a song played by sympathetic fingers; a little poem tucked in the blotter of the strong man’s desk, an artful praising of the strong man’s self!

Mary realized this latter fork was not probable––nor was she unhappy because of it. She sometimes retired to her study to vow eternal wrath upon Trudy Burrows for having attached herself to the household; or to pray that her mother be enlightened to the extent of moving; but beyond an occasional “mad on,” as Luke said, Mary viewed life from the angle of the doughnut and not that of the hole.

“I wish someone else would try baking these greasy things,” she said, coming in with another plateful.

“Why don’t you slip on a kimono instead of a 28 starched house dress, Mary? Whoever is spick-and-span on Sunday morning?”

“Don’t get Mary to lecturing,” Mrs. Faithful warned between bites. “She’ll make us all go to church if we’re not careful. Are you going out with Gay to-day, Trudy?”

“Yes. And I’m awfully mad at him, too. It’s fierce the way he gambles.”

“Don’t be too harsh; it’s a mistake to nag too much beforehand. He’s a lovely young man and I wish Luke could have one of those green paddock coats. I always like a gentleman’s coat with a sealskin collar, don’t you?”

“If it’s paid for.” Trudy’s eyes darkened. “Just because Gay comes of a wonderful family he thinks he has the keys to the city.”

“He’s a lovely young man,” Mrs. Faithful reiterated. “Oh, what did Beatrice Constantine wear when she came down to the office?”

“Clothes.” Mary was deep in the Sunday paper art section.

“She looked like a Christmas tree on fire,” Luke supplemented. “Lovely butter-coloured hair she has!”

“That will do. She is very nice, but different from our sort.” Mary glanced up from her paper.

Trudy bridled. “She’s no different; she has money. My things have as much style. Gaylord knows her intimately, and he says she is a wretched dancer and pouts if things don’t please her. The best tailors and modistes in the country make her things. Who wouldn’t look well? If I had one tenth of her income I’d be a more Gorgeous Girl than she is––and don’t I wish I had it! Oh, boy! Why, 29 that girl has her maid, the most wonderful jewellery you ever saw, two automobiles of her own and a saddle horse, and her father owns the best apartment house in town, and Beatrice is going to have the best apartment in it when she marries Steve. And you can just bet she knew she was going to marry him a long time ago––because she knew he’d rob the Bank of England to get a fortune. She’s flirted with everyone from an English nobleman to the Prince of Siam, and now she’s marrying the handsomest, brightest, most devoted cave man in the world.” Trudy glanced at Mary. “Yet she doesn’t really care for him, she just wants to be married before she is considered passée.” Trudy was very proud of her occasional French. “She’ll be twenty-six her next birthday!”

“Dear me, girls take their time these days; I was eighteen the day Mr. Faithful led me to the altar.”

“When are you going to get married?” Luke asked Trudy with malice aforethought.

“Oh, I’ll give Mary a chance. She don’t want to dance in the pig trough.”

Mary laid down the paper. “I wish you people would finish eating. Luke, are you going fishing with me out at the old mill? Then you better get the walks swept. We’ll be home in time for dinner, mother. I’ll leave the things as nearly ready as I can. How about you, Trudy?”

“Gay wants me to go to the Boulevard Café––they dance on Sunday just the same as weekdays––and then we’ll do a movie afterward. I suppose Steve and his Beatrice are now revelling in the Constantine conservatory, with Steve walking on all fours to prove his devotion. Why is it some girls have everything? Look at me––no one cares if I live or 30 die. First I had a stepmother, and then I tried living with a great-aunt, and then I went to work. Here I am still working, and a lot of thanks I get for it. I’d like to see the Gorgeous Girl have to work––well, I would!”

Mary brushed by with some dishes. Whereupon Trudy settled herself in an easy-chair and ran through the supplement sections, discussing the latest New York scandal with Mrs. Faithful. The next thing on Trudy’s Sunday program was washing out “just a few little things, Mary dear; and have you a bit of soap I could borrow and may I use the electric iron for half a jiffy?”

Presently there were hung on the line some dabs of chiffon and lace, and Trudy, taking advantage of her softened cuticle, sat down and did her nails, Mrs. Faithful admiring the high polish she achieved and reading Advice to the Anxious aloud for general edification.

After ironing the few little things Trudy shampooed her hair with scented soap and by the time its reddish loveliness was dry it was high noon and she repaired to her bedroom to mend and write letters. At one o’clock, in the process of dressing, she rapped at Mary’s door and asked to borrow a quarter.

“I’m terribly poor this week and if I should have a quarrel with Gay I want to have enough carfare to come home alone––you know how we scrap,” she explained.

About two o’clock there emerged from the front bedroom an excellent imitation of the Gorgeous Girl. Trudy had not exaggerated when she boasted of her own style. Though patronizing credit houses exclusively and possessing not a single woollen garment nor 31 a penny of savings, she tripped down the stairs in answer to Luke’s summons, a fearful, wonderful little person in a gown of fog-coloured chiffon with a violet sash and a great many trimmings of blue crystal beads. She boasted of a large black hat which seemed a combination of a Spanish scarf and a South Sea pirate’s pet headgear, since it had red coral earrings hanging at either side of it. Over her shoulders was a luxurious feline pelt masquerading comfortably under the title of spotted fox. White kid boots, white kid gloves, a silver vanity case, and a red satin rose at her waist completed the costume.

Standing in the offing, about to decamp with Mary, Luke gave a low whistle to tip her off to look out the window and not miss it. Mrs. Faithful was peeking from behind the starched window curtains as there glided before her eyes the most elegant young woman and impressive young man ever earning fifteen dollars and no dollars a week respectively.

“How do they do it?” Mary sighed. “Come, Luke, let’s get on the trail of something green and real.”

A few moments later there hurried along the same pathway a tall young woman in an old tailored suit which impressed one with the wearer’s plainness. Instead of a silver vanity case she was laden with a basket of newspapers, string, and a garden trowel, indicating that fern roots would be the vogue shortly. Shouldering fishing tackle Luke turned his freckled face toward Mary as they began a conversation, and his perpetual grin was momentarily replaced by an expression of respect. At least his sister was not like the average woman, who depends solely on her clothes to make her interesting.

Meantime, Trudy and Gaylord Vondeplosshe were 32 beginning their Sunday outing by walking to the corner in silence––the usual preliminary to a dispute. Gaylord was quite Trudy’s equal as to clothes, not only in style but in forgetfulness to pay for them. Still, he was not unusual after one fully comprehended the type, for they flourished like mushrooms. His had been a rich and powerful family––only-the-father-drank-you-see variety––the sort taking the fastest and most expensive steamer to Europe and bringing shame upon the name of American traveller after arriving. Gaylord had been the adored and only son, and his adored and older sister had managed to marry fairly well before the crash came and debts surrounded the entire Vondeplosshe estate.

He was small and frail, a trifle bow-legged to be exact, with pale and perpetually weeping eyes, a crooked little nose with an incipient moustache doing its best to hide a thick upper lip. His forehead sloped back like a cat’s, and his scanty, sandy hair was brushed into a shining pompadour, while white eyelashes gave an uncanny expression to his face. Abortive lumps of flesh stuck on at careless intervals sufficed for ears, and his scrawny neck with its absurdly correct collar and wild necktie seemed like an old, old man’s when he dresses for his golden-wedding anniversary. Everything about Gaylord seemed old, exhausted, quite ineffectual. His mother had never tired boasting that Gaylord had had mumps, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, St. Vitus dance, double pneumonia, and typhoid, had broken three ribs, his left arm, his right leg, and his nose––all before reaching the age of sixteen. And yet she raised him!

Coupled with this and the fact of his father’s failure people were lenient to him.

33

“He’s Vondeplosshe’s boy,” they said; so they gave him a position or a loan or a letter of introduction, and thought at the same time what a splendid thing it was Vondeplosshe was out of it instead of having to stand by and see his son make a complete foozle. For some time Gaylord had been scampering up and down the gauntlet of sympathy, and as long as he could borrow more money in Hanover than he could possibly earn he refused to go to work.

Originally he would have been almost as rich as the Gorgeous Girl herself, but as it was he was poor as Trudy Burrows, only Trudy was a nobody, her family being a dark and uncertain quantity in the wilds of Michigan.

Whereas Gaylord was Vondeplosshe and he could––and did––saunter past a red-brick mansion and remark pensively: “I was born in the room over the large bay window; the one next to it was my nursery––a dear old spot. Rather tough, old dear, to have to stand outside!” Or: “Father was a charter member of the club, so they carry me along without dues. Decent of them, isn’t it? Father was a prince among men, robbed right and left, y’know––always the way when a gentleman tries to be in business. Some say it was Constantine himself who did the worst of it. Of course never repeat it, will you? It takes a man with Steve O’Valley’s coarseness to forge ahead.”

His wobbly, rickety little body always wore the most startling of costumes. A green paddock coat, well padded, a yellow walking stick in the thin fingers, a rakish hat, patent-leather boots, striped suits, silk shirts with handkerchiefs to match, a gold cigarette case, and a watch chain like a woman’s, were a few of 34 Gaylord’s daily requisites. He lived at a club called The Hunters of Arcadia, where he paid an occasional stipend and gambled regularly, sometimes winning. He also promoted things in half-dishonest, half-idiotic fashion, undertaking to bring on opera singers for a concert, sometimes realizing a decent sum and sometimes going behind only to be rescued by an old family friend.

Gaylord was always keen on dinner invitations. And because he was a son of Vondeplosshe the same family friends endured his conceited twaddle and his knock-kneed, wicked little self, and sighed with relief when he went away. It would be so much easier to send these dethroned sons of rich men a supply of groceries and an order for coal!

Besides these lines of activity Gaylord wrote society items for the paper, and as he knew everyone and everything about them he was worth a stipend to the editor. He was considered a divine dancer by the buds, and counted as a cutey by widows. But his standing among creditors was: If he offered a check for the entire amount or a dollar on account, pass up the check!

Steve had destroyed several IOU’s with Gaylord’s name attached for the sole reason that Gay had been a playmate of Beatrice’s and she rather favoured him.

“He is so convenient,” she had defended. “You can always call him up at the last minute if someone has disappointed for cards or dinner, and he is never busy. He can shop with you as well as a woman, lunch with you, dance with you––and he does know the proper way to handle small silver. Besides, he loves Monster.” Monster was Bea’s pound-and-a-half 35 spaniel, which barked her wonder at the silken beauty of Beatrice’s boudoir.

So Gaylord travelled his own peculiar gait, with his married sister occasionally sending him checks; as busy as a kitten with a ball of yarn in making everyone tolerate though loathing him. When he visited Steve’s office in the first flush of Steve’s success, to ask the thousandth favour from him, and spied Trudy Burrows in all her lemon-kid booted, pink-chiffon waisted, red-haired loveliness––as virile and bewitching as any one Gaylord’s pale little mind could picture––he proved himself a “true democrat,” as he boasted at the club, and offered her his hand in marriage in short order.

Having just despaired of winning a moneyed bride Gaylord chose Truletta, reasoning that if she were a little nobody it would give him the whiphand over her, since she would feel that to marry a Vondeplosshe was no small triumph. Besides, a chic red-haired wife who knew how to make the most of nothing and to smile, showing thirty-two pearly teeth as cleverly as any dental ad, would not be a bad asset among his men friends. Had the Vondeplosshe fortunes remained intact and Gay met Trudy he would still have pressed his attentions upon her, though they might not have taken the form of an offer of marriage. Trudy’s virile, magnetic personality would have commanded this weakling’s attention and admiration at any time and in any circumstances––which is the way of things.

Very wisely Trudy kept the engagement somewhat of a secret. She estimated that by being seen with Gay she might meet a not impoverished and real man; and Gay––who still hoped for an heiress to fall 36 madly in love with him––was willing to let the matter be a mere understanding. So this oversubscribed flirt and this underendowed young gentleman had been waiting for nearly two years for something to live on in order to be married or else two new affinities in order that they might part amicably.

They did not speak until they were in the café, where it looked well for Gaylord to be attentive and Trudy gracious.

Under the mask of a smile Trudy began: “I’m cross. You were gambling again––yes, you were! Never mind how I know. I know!... I’ll have macaroni, ripe olives, and a cream puff.”

“The same,” Gay said, mournfully; adding: “Well, deary, I have to live!”

“Why not work? I do. You sponge along and waste everyone’s time. I’m not getting any younger, and it’s pretty rough to be in an office with horrid people ordering you round––to have to hear all about Beatrice Constantine and her wonderful wedding. I’m as good as she is––yet I’ll not be asked, and you will be.”

“Of course I am. I’m her oldest playmate,” he said, proudly.

Trudy’s temper jumped the stockade. “So, you paste jewel, you’ll go mincing into church and see her married and dance with everyone afterward; and I’ll sit in the office licking postage stamps while you kiss the bride! I’m better looking than she is; and if you are good enough to go to that wedding so am I!”

“Why, Trudy,” he began, in a bewildered fashion, “don’t make a scene.”

“No use making a scene in a fifty-cent café,” she told him, bitterly, “but I’m plenty good looking 37 enough to have a real man buy me a real dinner with a taxi and wine and violets as extras. Don’t think you are doing me a big favour by being engaged to me.”

“Oh, you’re a great little girl,” he said, nervously; “and it’s all going to come out right. It does rile me to think of your working for Steve. Never mind, my ship will come in and then we’ll show them all.”

“I’m twenty-three and you’re twenty-six, and my eyes ache when I work steadily. I’ll have to wear glasses in another year––but I’ll wash clothes before I’ll do it!”

“When it gets that bad we’ll be married,” he said, seriously.

The humour passed over Trudy’s head. “Married on what?” She was her prettiest when angry and she stirred in Gaylord’s one-cylinder brain a resolve to play fairy-godfather husband and somehow deliver a fortune at her feet.

“I can’t live at your club,” she continued; “and your sister is jealous of her husband and wouldn’t want me round. We couldn’t live with the Faithfuls; Mary’s a nice girl but I can’t go their quiet ways. I only stay because it’s cheap. I owe more than two hundred dollars right now.”

Gaylord was sympathetic. “I owe more than that,” he admitted; “but I’m going to have some concerts and there’ll be good horse races soon––sure things, you know. You’ll see, little girl. What would you say if I showed you a real bank account?”

“I wouldn’t waste time talking. I’d marry you.” Her good humour was returning. “Honest, Gay, do you think you might draw down some kale?”

Like all her kind she had an absurd trust in any one 38 who was paying her attention. With a different type of man Trudy would have been beaten, courageously had the gentleman arrested, and then interfered when the judge was directing him to the penitentiary.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk that way. When we are married and you meet my friends you’ll have to brush up on a lot of things.”

“I guess I’ll manage to be understood,” she retorted; “and when we are married maybe you can get my job so as to support your wife!”

The orchestra began playing a new rag, and Trudy and Gay immediately left their chairs to be the first couple on the floor. They were prouder of their dancing than of each other.

After several dances they became optimistic over the future and finished their dinner with the understanding that at the first possible moment they would be married and Trudy was to be a hard-working little bride causing her husband’s men friends to be nice to the Vondeplosshes, while husband would persuade the Gorgeous Girl to be nice to his wife.

They decided, too, that Mary Faithful was clever and good––but queer.

That Steve O’Valley would discover that a self-made man could not marry an heiress and make a go of it as well as a man of an aristocratic family could marry an adorable red-haired young lady and elevate her to his position.

That Trudy was far more beautiful than Beatrice Constantine, and as one lived only once in this world––why not always strive for a good time?

Whereat they had a farewell dance and moved on to the moving-picture world, where they held hands and stared vapidly at the films, repairing to a cafeteria 39 on a side street for a lunch, and then to the Faithful parlour. Mary had gone to church, Luke had boy friends in to discuss a summer camp, and his mother snored mildly on the dining-room sofa.

They took possession of the front parlour, and the enlarged crayons of the Faithful ancestors bore witness that for more than two hours these young people giggled over the comic supplement, debated as to the private life of the movie stars, tried new dance steps, and then planned how to get everything for nothing and, having done so, not to share their spoils.

“A perfectly lovely time!” Trudy said, glibly, as she kissed Gay good-night.

“Perfectly lovely!” he echoed, politely. “Don’t work too hard to-morrow, Babseley, will you? And do nothing rash until you see me.”

“Call me up to-morrow at eight, Bubseley,” she giggled. The pet names were of Gay’s choice.

So Bubseley tottered down the walk while Babseley turned out the lights and retired to her room with a bag of candy and a paprika-brand of novel. At midnight she tossed it aside and with self-pity prepared to go to sleep.

“And I’ll have to go to work to-morrow,” she sighed, planning her next silk dress as she did up the Titian hair in curlers.

40

CHAPTER III

WHEN the world was considerably younger it dressed children in imitation of its adults––those awful headdresses and heavy stays, long skirts to trip up tender little feet, and jewelled collars to make tiny necks ache. Now that the world “is growing evil and the time is waxing late” the grown-ups have turned the tables and they dress like the children––witness thereof to be found in the costume of Aunt Belle Todd, Mark Constantine’s sister, who had shared her brother’s fortunes ever since his wife had been presented with the marble monument.

Like all women who have ceased having birthdays Aunt Belle had not ceased struggling. She still had hopes of a financier who would carry her off in a storm of warmed-over romance to a castle in Kansas. Her first husband was Thomas Todd, the carpenter, chiefly distinguished for falling off a three-story building on which he was working and never harming a hair of his head; also for singing first bass in the village quartet. Aunt Belle had slightly recoloured her past since she had lived with her brother. The account of Mr. Todd’s singing in the quartet was made to resemble a brilliant début in grand opera which was abandoned because of Aunt Belle’s dislike of stage life and its temptations, while his rolling off the three-story building was never alluded to except when Mark Constantine wished to tease.

She was a short, plump person with permanently 41 jet-black hair and twinkling eyes. Prepared to forgo all else save elegance, she had brought up her gorgeous niece with the idea that it was never possible to have too much luxury. Seated in the Gorgeous Girl’s dressing room she now presented excellent proof that the world was growing very old indeed, for her plump self was squeezed into a short purple affair made like a pinafore, her high-heeled bronze slippers causing her to totter like a mandarin’s wife; and strings of coral beads and a gold lorgnette rose and fell with rhythmic motion as she sighed very properly over her niece’s marriage.

“It will never be the same, darling,” she was saying, glancing in a mirror to see if the light showed the rouge boundaries too clearly––“never quite the same. You’ll understand when your daughter marries––for you have been just as dear as one.”

Beatrice, who was busy inspecting some newly arrived lingerie, did not glance up as she answered: “Don’t be silly. You know it’s a relief. You can sit back and rest from now on––until I’m divorced,” she added with a smile.

“How can you even say such a thing?”

Beatrice tossed the filmy creamy silk somethings or other away and delivered herself of her mind. “Alice Twill was divorced before she married this specimen; so was Coralie Minter; and Harold Atwater; and both the Deralto girls were divorced, and their mother, too. And Jill Briggs is considering it, and I’m sure I don’t blame her. Everyone seems to think a divorce quite the proper caper when things grow dull. You may as well have all the fun you can. Steve wants me to have everything I fancy, and I’m sure he’d never deny me a divorce.”

42

“You are marrying a splendid, self-made young man who adores you and who is making money every day in the week. No girl is to be more envied––you have had a wonderful ten years of being a ‘Gorgeous Girl,’ as your dear papa calls it, and at twenty-six you are to become the bride of a wonderful man––neither too early nor too late an age. I cannot really grieve––when I realize how happy you are going to be, and yet–––”

“Don’t work so hard, aunty,” Bea said, easily. “Of course Steve’s a wonderful old dear and all that––I wish I had asked him for the moon. I do believe he’d have gotten an option on it.” She laughed and reached over to a bonbon dish to rummage for a favourite flavour. She selected a fat, deadly looking affair, only to bite into it and discover her mistake. She tossed it on the floor so that Monster could creep out of her silk-lined basket and devour the remains.

“If you call natural feelings of a mother and an aunt ‘working hard’ I am at a loss–––” her aunt began with attempted indignation.

“Oh, I don’t call anything anything; I’m dead and almost buried.” She looked at her small self in the pier glass. “Think of all I have to go through with before it is over and we are on our way west. Here it is half-past twelve and I’ve not eaten breakfast really. I’m so tired of presents and bored with clothes that I cannot acknowledge another thing or decide anything. I think weddings are a frightful ordeal. Did you know the women on my war-relief committee presented me with a silver jewel box? Lovely of them, wasn’t it? But I deserve it––after slaving all last winter. My bronchitis was just because I sold tags for them during that rainy weather.”

43

“No, I haven’t seen it. But I am glad you decided on a church wedding––there is such a difference between a wedding and just a marriage.”

Beatrice shoved the box of lingerie away. “Those are all wrong, so back they go; and I can’t help it if that woman does need money, I told her I wanted a full inch-and-a-half beading and she has put this crochet edge all round everywhere. I shan’t accept a single piece!”

Whereupon she sat down at her dressing table and rang for her maid. Madame Pompadour herself had no lovelier boudoir than Beatrice. It was replete with rose-coloured taffeta curtains, padded sky-blue silk walls with garlands of appliquéd flowers. Lace frills covered every possible object; the ivory furniture was emphasized by smart rose upholstery, and the dressing table itself fairly dazzled one by the array of gold-topped bottles and gold-backed brushes.

Johanna, the maid, began brushing the sunshiny hair, the Gorgeous Girl stamping her feet as snarls asserted themselves.

“Two more days before the wedding,” she complained. “There’s the Twill luncheon to-day and a bridge and tea at Marion Kavanaugh’s––I hate her, too. She gave me the most atrocious Chinese idol. I’m going to tell her I have no proper place for it, that it deserves to be alone in a room in order to have it properly appreciated.” She laughed at herself. “So I’ll leave it for papa. The apartment won’t hold but just so much––it’s a tiny affair.” She laughed again, the apartment having only eleven rooms and a profusion of iron grille work at all the windows. “But it’s a wonderful way to start––in an apartment––it is such a good excuse for not dragging in all the 44 terrible wedding presents. I can leave everything I like with papa because he never minds anything as long as he has old slippers and plenty of mince pie. After a year or so I’m going to have a wonderful house copied after one I saw in Italy. By then they will all have forgotten what they gave me and I can furnish it so we won’t have to go about wearing blinders.... The blue dress, Jody, that’s right.”

“And what is it to-night?” her aunt asked, meekly.

“The Farmsworth dinner; and to-morrow another luncheon and the garden party at the club. Then the dinner here, rehearsal; and Wednesday, thank heaven, it will be all ended!”

Johanna helped fasten the king’s-blue satin with seed-pearl trimmings and place a trig black hat atilt on the yellow hair.

“The ermine scarf, please.”

The Gorgeous Girl was slipping matronly looking rings on her fingers and adding an extra dab of powder. She took another chocolate, hugged Monster, gave orders about sending back the lingerie, remarked that she must send her photograph to the society editor for the next day’s edition, and she thought the one taken in her Red Cross outfit would be the sweetest; and then kissing the tip of her aunt’s right ear she sailed downstairs and into the closed car to be whirled to Alice Twill’s house, a duplicate of the Gorgeous Girl’s. There she was enthusiastically embraced and there followed a mutual admiration as to gowns, make-ups, and jewellery, and a mutual sympathy as to being desperately tired and busy.

“My dear, I haven’t had time to breath––it’s perfectly awful! I’ll have to drop out of things next 45 winter. Steve will never allow me to be so overburdened. I can’t sleep unless I take a powder and I can’t have any enthusiasm in the morning unless I have oodles of black coffee. Of course one has had to do serious work––thank heavens the war is over!––but you can’t give up all the good times.... What a lovely centre piece! And those cunning little gilt suitcases for favours! A really truly gold veil pin in each one? You love! Oh, let’s have a cocktail before any one comes in. It does pick me up wonderfully.... Thanks.... Yes, I had breakfast in bed––some coffee and gluten crackers was all, and aunty had to stay in my room half the morning trying to be pensive about my wedding! No, Markham didn’t make my travelling suit half as well as he did Peggy Brewster’s. I shall never go near him again.... And did you hear that Jill found her diamond pendant in her cold cream jar, so it wasn’t a burglar at all!

“Yes, Gaylord Vondeplosshe is going to be an usher.... Well, what else could I do at the last moment? Wasn’t it absurd for a grown man like Fred Jennings to go have the mumps? Gay knows everyone and I’m sure he is quite harmless.... Oh, Steve is well and terribly busy, you know. He is giving me the most wonderful present. Papa hasn’t given me his yet and I’m dying to know what it is, he always gives me such wonderful things, too.... There’s the bell. I do hope it isn’t Lois Taylor, because she always wants people to sign petitions and appear in court. It is Lois Taylor! Why didn’t you leave word to have all petitions checked with wraps?” Giggles. “Good heavens, what a fright of a hat. Well, are you ready to go down?”

46

Five hours later Beatrice was being dressed for the evening’s frolic, dipping into the bonbon box for a stray maple cream, and complaining of her headache. At this juncture her father tiptoed clumsily into her room and laid a white velvet jewel case on her dressing table, standing back to watch her open it.

“You dear–––” she began in stereotyped, high-pitched tones as she pressed the spring. “You duck!” she added a trifle more enthusiastically, viewing the bowknot of gems in the form of a pin––a design of diamonds four inches wide with a centre stone of pigeon’s-blood ruby. “You couldn’t have pleased me more”––trying it against her dressing gown. “See, Jody, isn’t this wonderful? I must kiss you.” She rustled over to her father and brushed her lips across his cheek, rustling back again to tell Jody that she must try the neck coil again––it was entirely too loose.

“I guess Steve can’t go any better than that,” her father said, balancing himself on his toes and, in so doing, rumpling the rug.

He was a tall, heavily built man with harsh features and gray hair, the numerous signs of a self-made man who is satisfied with his own achievements. He had often told his sister: “Bea can be the lady of the family. I’m willing to set back and pay for it. It’d never do for me to start buying antiques or quoting poetry. I can wear a dress suit without disgracing Bea, and make an after-dinner speech if they let me talk about the stockyards. But when it comes to musicals and monocles I ask to be counted out. I had to work too hard the first half of my life to be able to play the last half of it. I wasn’t born in cold storage and baptized with cracked ice the way 47 these rich men’s sons are. I’ve shown this city that a farmer’s boy can own the best in the layout and have his girl be the most gorgeous of the crew––barring none!

“This is a joy,” Beatrice was saying, rapidly, her small face wrinkled with displeasure.

She wished her father would go away because she wanted to think of a hundred details of the next forty-eight hours and her nerves were giving warning that their limit of endurance was near at hand. This big, awkward man who was so harsh a task-master to the world and so abject a slave to her own useless little self annoyed her. He offended in an even deeper sense––he did not interest her. Things which did not interest her were met with grave displeasure. Religion did not interest her; neither did Steve O’Valley’s business––her head ached whenever he ventured to explain it. She never had to listen to anything to which she did not wish to listen; the only rule imposed upon her was that of becoming the most gorgeous girl in Hanover, and this rule she had obeyed.

“Tired?” he asked, timidly.

“Dead. It’s terrible, papa. I don’t know how I’ll stay bucked up. I want to burst out crying every time a bell rings or any one speaks to me.... Oh, Jody, your fingers are all thumbs! Please try it again.”

“It looks nice,” her father ventured, indicating the puff of gold hair.

Beatrice did not answer; she sighed and had Johanna proceed.

“The Harkin detectives will watch the presents,” her father ventured again. “There are some more packages downstairs.”

48

“I’m tired of presents; I want to be through unwrapping crystal vases and gold-lined fruit dishes and silly book ends and having to write notes of thanks when I hate the gifts. My mind seems quivering little wires that won’t let me have a moment’s rest.” She took another piece of candy.

“When I married your mother,” her father remarked, softly, evidently forgetting Johanna’s presence, “we walked to a minister’s house in Gardenville about five miles south of here. Your mother was working for a farmer’s wife and she didn’t say she was going to be married. She was afraid they might try talking her out of it––you know how women do.” He looked round the elegant little room. “I was getting ten dollars a week––that seemed big money in those days. I rented two rooms in the rear cottage of a house on Ontario Street––it’s torn down now. And I bought some second-hand stuff to furnish it.”

He paced up and down; he had a habit of so doing since he was always whisked about in his motor car and he feared growing stiff if he did not exercise.

“But your mother liked the rooms––and the things. I remember I bought a combination chair and stepladder for a dollar and it didn’t work.” He gave a chuckle. “It stayed in a sort of betwixt and between position, about one third stepladder and about two thirds chair, and that worried me a lot. A dollar meant a good deal then. But your mother knew what to do with it, she used it for kindling wood and said we’d charge it up to experience. Yes, sir, we walked to the minister’s––she wore a blue-print dress with a little pink sprig in it, and a sort of a bonnet.” His hand made an awkward descriptive gesture.

“The minister was mighty nice––he took us into his 49 garden and let your mother pick a bunch of roses, and then he hitched up his horse and buggy and drove us back to the farmer’s house. The farmer’s wife cried a little when we told her; she liked your mother. She gave us a crock of butter and some jam. While your mother packed her little trunk––it wasn’t any bigger than one of your hatboxes––I went out and stood at the gate. I kept thinking, ‘By jingo, I’m a married man! Mr. and Mrs. Mark Constantine.’ And I felt sort of afraid––and almost ashamed. It frightened me because I knew it was two to feed instead of one, and I wondered if I’d done wrong to take Hannah away from the farmer’s wife when I was only getting ten dollars a week.

“Well, when she came out of the door she looked as pretty as you’ll look in all your stuff, and she came right up to me and said, game as a pebble, ‘Mark, we’re man and wife and we’ll never be sorry, will we? And when you’re rich and I’m old we will stay just as loving!’ I didn’t feel sorry or frightened any more––not once. Not until you came and they told me she had gone on. Then I felt mighty sorry––and frightened. She looked so tired when I saw her then––so tired.”

He paused, staring at his sunken gardens as seen from Beatrice’s windows. Some men lazily raked new-cut grass and a peacock preened itself by the sundial. The glass conservatory showed signs of activity. The florists were at work for the coming event. Then he looked at his daughter, who waited with polite restraint until his reverie was ended.

“I’ve given you all she would have had,” he said, as if in debate with himself that this was the last rebuttal against possible criticism.

50

Beatrice glided over beside him; she looked out of the window, too, and then at her father. Something quite like tears was in his harsh eyes.

“Daddy,” she began with a quick indrawing of her breath, “do you think she’d have wanted me to have all––all this?”

“Why wouldn’t she?” he answered, taking her arm gently. He had always treated her with a formality amounting almost to awe.

“I don’t know––only I sometimes do almost think––would you suspect it? When I go to the office and watch those queerly dressed women bending over desks and earning a few dollars a week and having to live on it––and when I see how they manage to smile in spite of it––and how I waste and spend––and shed a great many tears––well, I wonder if it is quite safe to start as Steve and I are starting!” Then she threw her arms round him. “Steve won’t believe that I’ve been serious, will he? Now, daddy dear, please go ’way and let me dress, for I’m ’way late.”

She kissed him almost patronizingly and he tiptoed out of her room, rather glad to get into his own domain––the majestic library with its partially arranged wedding gifts.

“We’re doing ourselves proud,” he remarked to his sister, who had been rearranging them.

“What I told Beatrice this morning. Only she is all nerves. She can’t enjoy anything––it will be a relief to me, Mark, as well as a loss, when it is over.”

Her brother viewed her with a quizzical expression. Like the rest of the world his sister never fooled him. But like all supermen there was one human being in 51 whom all his trust was centred, and who very often thus brought about his defeat. In his case, as with Steve O’Valley, it chanced to be Beatrice.

Regarding her both men––merciless with their associates and dubbed as fish-blooded coroners by their enemies––were like gullible children following a lovely and willful Pied Piperess. But Mark’s sister with her vanities and fibs irritated and amused him by turns. Perhaps he resented her sharing this material triumph instead of the tired-faced woman in the churchyard.

“Do you remember the time you did the beadwork for the head carpenter’s wife and when she paid you for it you spent the dollar for liquid rouge? Todd was so mad he wouldn’t speak for a week,” he chuckled, unkindly.

“Don’t say such things! Think how it would embarrass Bea. Of course I don’t remember. Neither do you.”

“Oh, don’t I? What’s the harm recalling old times? I remember when you tried to make Todd a winter overcoat and he said it looked most as good as a deep-sea diver’s outfit. My Hannah nearly died a-laughing.”

Fortunately Steve appeared, flourishing Beatrice’s corsage by way of a greeting.

“Aha, the conquerer comes. My dear lad, your lady love has just ousted me from her room, she’ll be down presently. Belle, Steve and I are going into the den to smoke.”

“I’m trying to look as amiable as possible, but I wish fuss and feathers were not the mode.” Steve smiled his sweetest at Aunt Belle and then took Constantine’s arm. “The cave-man style of 52 clubbing one’s chosen into unconsciousness and strolling at leisure through the jungle with her wasn’t half bad. By the way, I did sell the Allandale man to-day, and the razor-factory stock is going to boom instead of flatten out––I’m sure of it.”

He lit a cigarette and threw himself into an easy-chair. Constantine selected a cigar and trimmed its end, watching Steve as he did so.

“You’ve come on about as well as they ever do,” he remarked, unexpectedly. “None of these rich young dogs could have matched you. Seen the presents?”

“Scads of ’em. Awful stuff. I don’t know what half of it is for. Bea is going to hand you most of it. The apartment is to be a thing of beauty and she won’t hear of taking the offerings along.”

“How is the shop?”

“Splendid––Mary Faithful will manage it quite as well as I do. I shall hear from her daily, you’ll stroll over that way, and I can manage to keep my left little finger on the wheel.”

“Mary’s a good sort,” Constantine mused. “Sorry I ever let her go over to your shebang. What’s her family like?”

“Don’t know. Never thought about ’em. Her kid brother works round the place after school. Guess Mary’s the man of the family.”

“How much do you pay her?”

“Forty a week.”

“Cheap enough. A man would draw down seventy and demand an assistant. I never had any luck with women secretaries––they all wanted to marry me,” he admitted, grimly.

“Mary’s not that sort. Business is her life. If 53 she were a man I’d have a rival. I’m going to give her fifty a week from now on; she’s giving up her vacation to stay on the job.”

“Don’t spoil her.”

“No danger. I’ve promised Beatrice to really learn to play bridge,” he changed the conversation.

“Accept my sympathy–––” Constantine began and then Beatrice in a lovely Bohemian rainbow dinner gown came stealing in to stand before them and complain of her headache and admire her corsage and let Steve wrap her in her cape and half carry her to the limousine.

“I shan’t see you a moment until we’re married,” he began, mournfully. “I’ve been most awfully neglected. But as you are going to be all mine I can’t complain. You’re prettier than ever, Bea.... Love me?... Lots?... Whole lots? You don’t say it the way I want you to,” laughing at his own nonsense.

“I’ll scream it and a crowd can gather to bear witness.” She dimpled prettily and nibbled at a rose leaf. “It’s all like a fairy tale––everyone says so, and lots of the girls would like to be marrying you on Wednesday.”

“Tell them I belong to the Gorgeous Girl until six men are walking quietly beside me and assisting me to a permanent resting place. Even then I’ll belong to her,” he added.

“Your nose is so handsome,” she said, wistfully, recalling her own.

“Talking of noses! Bea, sometimes it’s terrible to realize that my ambitions have become true. To dream and work without ceasing and without much 54 caring what you do until your dream merges into reality––it makes even a six-footer as hysterical as a schoolgirl.”

“You’re intense,” she said, soberly. “Jill says you’d make a wonderful actor.”

Steve looked annoyed. “Those scatterbrained time wasters––don’t listen to them. Let’s find our real selves––you and I; be worth while. Now that I’ve made my fortune I want to spend it in a right fashion––I want to be interested in things, not just dollars and cents. Help me, dearest. You know about such things; you’ve never had the ugliness of poverty bruise the very soul of you.”

“You mean having a good time––and parties–––” she began.

“No; books, music; studying human conditions. I want to study the slow healing of industrial wounds and determine the best treatment for them. I have made the real me go ’way, ’way off somewheres for a long time until I won my pile of gold that helped me capture the girl I loved. Now it is done the real me wants to come back and stay.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, vaguely. “Of course there are tiny things to brush up on––greeting people, and you mustn’t be so in earnest at dinner parties and contradict and thump your fist. It isn’t good form.”

“When whippersnappers like Gaylord Vondeplosshe–––”

“Sh-h-h! Gay’s a dear. He is accepted every place.”

“We’re nearly there, tough luck! One kiss, please; no one can see. Say you care, then everything else must true up.”

55

The wedding took place at high noon in church, with the bishop and two curates to officiate. There was a vested choir singing “The Voice That Breathed O’er Eden”; a thousand dollars’ worth of flowers; six bridesmaids in pastel frocks and picture hats, shepherdess’ staffs, and baskets of lilies of the valley; a matron of honour, flower girls, ushers; a best man, a papa, an aunty in black satin with a large section of an ostrich farm for her hat––and a bridegroom.

After the wedding came the breakfast at the Constantine house. Though certain guests murmured that it was a trifle too ultra like the house itself, which was half a medieval castle and half the makings of a village fire department, it was generally considered a success. Nothing was left undone. The bride left the church amid the ringing of chimes; her health was drunk, and she slipped up to the rose-taffeta-adorned boudoir to exchange her ivory satin for a trim suit of emerald green. Everyone wished on the platinum circlet of diamonds and there was the conventional throwing of the bouquet, the rush through the back of the grounds to the hired taxi, the screams of disappointment at the escape––and Mr. and Mrs. O’Valley were en route on their honeymoon.

It remained for the detectives to guard the presents, the society reporters to discover new adjectives of superlative praise, and the guests to drink up the champagne and say: “Wonderful.” “Must have cost thousands.” “Handsome couple. Couldn’t have happened in any other country but America.” “War fortune.” “Oh, yes, no doubt of it––hides and razors turned the trick.” “Well, how long do you think it is going to last?”

56

The office forces of the O’Valley and Constantine companies had been excused so as to be present at the ceremony. But Mary Faithful and Trudy Burrows had not availed themselves of the opportunity. Womanly rebellion and heartache suddenly blotted out Mary’s emotionless scheme of action. Besides, there was a valid excuse of waiting to catch an important long-distance call. With Trudy it was mere envy causing her to say over and over: “See Gay, the ragged little beggar, walk up the aisle with one of those rich girls and never glance at me––just because he’s a Vondeplosshe? And me have to sit beside Nellie Lunk, who’ll cry when the organ plays and wear that ridiculous bathtub of a hat? Never! I won’t go unless I can walk up the aisle with Gay. Wait until I see him to-night; I’ll make it very pleasant.”

Life seemed rather empty for Trudy as she sat in the deserted offices pretending to add figures and trying to hum gayly. Even the box of wedding cake laid on her desk––it was laid on everyone’s desk––brought forth no smile or intention of dreaming over it. Was she to spend her days earning fifteen dollars a week in this feudal baron’s employ? Tears marred the intensive cultivation on her rouged cheeks as she looked out the window to see the office force being brought back from the church in trucks.

“Like cattle––peasants––all because of money. A war profiteer, that’s what he was. And she isn’t anything at all except that she has her father’s money.” She glanced toward Mary’s closed door. “Poor Mary,” she thought; “she cares! I don’t––that makes it easier. Well, he could have done worse than to take Mary,” tossing her head as she 57 tried to create the impression of indifference now that the employees were coming back to their desks.

For there was a forked road for Trudy as well as for Mary Faithful. Women are no longer compelled to accept the one unending pathway of domesticity. Trudy’s forked road resolved itself into either marriage with Gay as a stepping stone to marriage with someone else, or a smart shop with society women and actresses as patrons, being able to live at a hotel and do as she wished, inventing a neat little past of escaping from a Turkish harem or being the widow of an English officer who died serving his country. Trudy was not without resources, in her own estimation, and whether she married Gay or achieved the shop was a toss-up. Like the rest of the world she considered herself capable of doing both!

Hearing the scuffle of feet Mary opened the door and forced herself to ask about the wedding. Presently the excitement died down and the round of mechanical drudgery took its place. An hour later someone knocked at an inner door which led to steep side stairs connecting with a side street entrance. Wondering who it was Mary opened it, to find Steve, very flushed and handsome, a flower in his buttonhole yet no hint of rice about him.

“Sh-h-h! Not a word out loud! I want to escape. Mrs. O’Valley is waiting round the corner in a cab. I forgot the long-distance call––the one we expected yesterday.”

“It came while everyone was at the church. I stayed here in case it did. They will pay your price, so I closed the deal.”

“Hurrah for Mary Faithful! But I wish you could have been there. It was like a picture. I never saw 58 her look so lovely. Well, that’s settled. Wire me at Chicago. I think that’s everything. Oh, you’re to have fifty a week from now on. What man isn’t generous on his wedding day? Good-bye, Miss Head of Affairs.” A moment later he was climbing down the rickety flight of stairs.

For a long time Mary sat watching the hands of her desk clock slowly proceed round the dial. Someone knocked at the door and she said to come in, but her voice sounded faint and far away.

Fifty dollars a week––generous on his wedding day! She ought to be very glad; it meant she could save more and have an occasional treat for Luke. It was good to think that women had forked roads these days. How terrible if she were left in the shelter of a home to mourn unchecked. Besides, she was guarding his business; that was a great comfort. The Gorgeous Girl was sharing him with Mary Faithful––would always share him. That was a comfort, too.

After the errand boy left, Mary tried to write a letter but she found herself going into the washroom off Steve’s office and without warning weakly burying her face in an old working coat he had left behind. She had just made a great many dollars for him which he would spend on the Gorgeous Girl; she would make many more during the long summer while she stayed at the post and was Miss Head of Affairs. She had laid her woman’s hopes on the altar of commerce because of Steve O’Valley, and he rewarded her with a ten-dollar-a-week raise since a man was always generous on his wedding day.

Yet there was a distinct satisfaction in the heartache and the responsibility, even in the irony of the ten-dollar-a-week advance. Life might be hard––but 59 it was not empty! She was glad to be in the deserted office replete with his belongings and breathing of his personality. She was glad to be an acknowledged Miss Head of Affairs.

“You’d miss even a heartache if it was all you had,” she whispered to herself from within the folds of Steve’s office coat.

60

CHAPTER IV

During the summer the O’Valley Leather Company discovered that Mary Faithful made quite as efficient a manager as Steve O’Valley himself. Nor did she neglect any of a multitude of petty details––such as the amount of ice needed for the water cooler, the judicious issue of office supplies; the innovation of a rest-room for girls metamorphosed out of a hitherto dingy storeroom; the eradication of friction between two ancient bookkeepers who had come to regard the universe as against them. Even the janitor’s feelings were appeased by a few kind words and a crossing of his palm with silver when Mary decided to houseclean before Steve’s return.

It is impossible for a business woman not to have feminine notions. They stray into her routine existence like blades of pale grass persistently shooting up between the cracks of paving blocks. Quite frilly curtains adorned Mary’s office windows, fresh flowers were kept in a fragile vase, a marble bust of Dante guarded the filing cabinet, and despite the general cleaning she used a special little silk duster for her own knicknacks. On a table was a very simple tea service with a brass samovar for days when the luncheon hour proved too stormy for an outside excursion.

Sharing Steve with the Gorgeous Girl, Mary had decided to clean his business home just as the Gorgeous 61 Girl would have the apartment set in spick-and-span order. It was during the general upsetting with brooms, mops, paint pots, and what not, while Mary good-naturedly tried to work at a standing desk, that Mark Constantine dropped in unexpectedly.

“Gad!” he began, characteristically. “Thought I’d find you in your cool and hospitable office inviting me to have a siesta.” He mopped his face with a huge silk handkerchief.

“Try it in a few days and we will be quite shipshape.” Mary wheeled up a chair for him. “Anything I can do for you?”

He sank down with relief; his fast-accumulating flesh made him awkward and fond of lopping down at unexpected intervals. He glanced up at this amazing young woman, crisp and cool in her blue muslin dress, the tiny gold watch in a black silk guard being her only ornament. His brows drew into what appeared to be a forbidding frown; he really liked Mary, with her steady eyes somehow suggesting eternity and her funny freckled nose destroying any such notion.

“How are you getting on?” was all he said.

“Splendidly. We expect Mr. O’Valley a week from Monday––but of course you know that yourself.”

“Gad,” Constantine repeated.

“And how is Mr. Constantine?” Mary asked, almost graciously.

“In the hands of my enemy,” he protested. “Bea left a hundred and one things to be seen to. My sister has sprained her ankle and is out of the running. It’s the apartment that causes the trouble––Bea has 62 sent letter after letter telling what she wants us to do. I thought everything was all set before she went away but––here!” He drew out violet notepaper and handed it over. “Sorry to bother you, but when that girl gets home and settled I hope she’ll be able to tend to her own affairs and leave us in peace. I guess you understand how women are about settling a new house.”

Reluctantly Mary deciphered the slanting, curlicue handwriting, which said in part:

Now, papa dear, I’m terribly worried about the painted Chinese wall panels for the little salon. They are likely to be the wrong design. Jill has written that hers were. So please get the man to give you a guarantee that he will correct any mistakes. I want you to go to Brayton’s and get white-and-gold jars that will look well in the dining room––Brayton knows my tastes. Besides this, he is to have two rose pots of old Wheldon ware for me––they will contain electrically lighted flowers––like old-fashioned bouquets. I wish you and aunty would drive out to the arts-and-crafts shop and bid on the red lacquer cabinet and the French clock that is in stock; I am sure no one has bought them. I could not decide whether I wanted them or not until now, and I must have them. They will tone in beautifully with the rugs.

Mary turned the page:

Also, Aunt Belle has not answered my letter asking her to order the monogrammed stationery––four sizes, please, ashes of roses shade and lined with gold tissue. I also told Aunt Belle to see about relining my mink cape and muff. I shall wish to wear it very early in the season, and I want something in a smart striped effect with a pleated frill for the muff. And the little house for Monster completely 63 slipped my mind––Aunt Belle knows about it––with a wind-harp sort of thing at one side and funny pictures painted on the outside. I have changed my mind about the colour scheme for the breakfast nook––I am going to have light gray, almost a silver, and I would like some good pewter things.

It seems to me I shall never be rested. Steve wants to see every sunrise and explore every trail. We have met quite nice people and the dancing at the hotels is lovely. Oh, yes, if you need any help I know Miss Faithful will be glad to help, and Gaylord has ripping ideas.

Loads of love to you, dear papa. Your own

Bea.

Mary returned the letter without comment.

“Will you help me?” Constantine demanded almost piteously. “Belle’s out of the running, you know.”

“I’m cleaning my own house,” Mary began, looking at the surrounding disorder, “but I can run up to the apartment with you and see what must be done; though it seems to me–––”

“Seems to you what, young woman?”

“––that your daughter would prefer to do these at her leisure––they are so personal.”

Constantine moved uneasily in his chair. “I guess women don’t like to do things these days”––rather disgruntled in general––“but she might as well have asked an African medicine man as to ask me. What do I know about red lacquered cabinets and relining fur capes? I just pay for them.”

Mary smiled. Something about his gruff, merciless personality had always attracted her. She had sometimes suspected that the day would come when she would be sorry for him––just why she did not know. She had watched him from afar during the period of 64 being his assistant bookkeeper, and now, having risen with the fortunes of Steve O’Valley, she faced him on an almost equal footing––another queer quirk of American commerce.

She realized that his tense race after wealth had been in a sense his strange manner of grieving for his wife. But his absolute concentration along one line resulted in a lack of wisdom concerning all other lines. Though he could figure to the fraction of a dollar how to beat the game, play big-fish-swallow-little-fish and get away with it, he had no more judgment as to his daughter’s absurd self than Monster, who had gone on the honeymoon wrapped in a new silken blanket. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too, as Mary had decided during her early days of running errands for nervous modistes who boxed her ears one moment and gave her a silk remnant the next. Neither can a man put all his powers of action into one channel, blinding himself to all else in the world, and expect to emerge well balanced and normal in his judgments.

As Mary agreed to help Constantine out of his débris of French clocks and pewter for the breakfast room she began to feel sorry for him even if he was a business pirate––for he had paid an extremely high price for the privilege of being made a fool of by his own child.

He escorted her to the limousine and they whirled up to the apartment house, where in all the gray stone, iron grille work, hall-boy elegance there now resided three couples of the Gorgeous Girl type, and where Bea’s apartment awaited her coming, the former tenants having been forced to vacate in time to have the place completely redone.

65

“I wouldn’t ask Gaylord if I had to do it myself,” Constantine said, brushing by the maid who opened the door. “There is a young man we could easily spare. If he ever gets as good a job as painting spots on rocking-horses I’ll eat my hat.”

Mary was surveying the room. “Where––where do we go to from here?” she faltered.

Constantine sank into a large chair, shaking his head. “Damned if I know,” he panted. “Look at that truck!”––pointing to piles of wedding gifts.

Mary walked the length of the drawing room. It had black velvet panels and a tan carpet with angora rugs spread at perilous intervals; there was a flowered-silk chaise-longue, bright yellow damask furniture, and an Italian-Renaissance screen before the marble fireplace.

Opening out of this was a salon––this was where the Chinese panels were to find a haven––and already cream-and-gold furniture had been placed at artistic angles with blue velvet hangings for an abrupt contrast. There was a multitude of books bound in dove-coloured ooze; cut glass, crystal, silver candelabra sprinkled throughout. Men were working on fluted white satin window drapes, and Mary glanced toward the dining room to view the antique mahogany and sparkle of plate. Someone was fitting more hangings in the den, and a woman was disputing with her co-worker as to the best place for the goldfish globe and the co-worker was telling her that Monster’s house was to occupy the room––yes, Monster, the O’Valley dog––a pound and a half, he weighed, and was subject to pneumonia. Here they began to laugh, and someone else, knowing of Constantine’s presence, discreetly closed the door.

66

Flushing, Mary returned to the drawing room and standing before Constantine’s chair she said swiftly: “I’m afraid I cannot help you, sir. I’m not this sort. I shouldn’t be able to please. Besides, it is robbing your daughter of a great joy––and a wonderful duty, if you don’t mind my saying it––this arranging of her own home. We have no right to do it for her.”

“She’s asked us to do it,” spluttered the big man.

“Then you will have to ask her to excuse me.”

Mary was almost stern. It seemed quite enough to have to stay at her post all summer, run the business and houseclean the office for his return, without being expected to come into the Gorgeous Girl’s realm and do likewise. In this new atmosphere she began to feel old and plain, quite impossible! The yellow damask furniture, the rugs, the silver and gold and lovely extravagances seemed laughing at her and suggesting: “Go back to your filing cabinet and your old-maid silk dusting cloths, to your rest-rooms for girls, and to your arguments with city salesmen. You have no more right here than she will ever have in your office.”

When Constantine would have argued further she threw back her head defiantly, saying: “Someone explains the difference between men and women by the fact that men swear and women scream, which is true as far as it goes. But in these days you often find a screaming gentleman and a profane lady––and there’s a howdy-do! You can’t ask the profane lady––no matter if she is a right-hand business man––to come fix pretties. You better write your daughter what I’ve said, and if you don’t mind I’d like to get back to the office.”

Constantine rose, frowning down at her with an 67 expression that would have frightened a good many women stauncher than Mary Faithful. For she had mentioned to him what no one, not even his sluggish conscience, had ever hinted at––his daughter’s duty.

But all he said was: “Profane ladies and screaming gentlemen. Well, I’ve put a screaming-gentleman tag on Gaylord Vondeplosshe––but what about yourself? Where are you attempting to classify?”

“Me? I’ll be damned if I help you out,” she laughed up at him as she moved toward the door.

Chuckling, yet defeated, Constantine admitted her triumph and sent her back to the office in the limousine.

At that identical moment Gaylord, alias the screaming gentleman, had been summoned to Aunt Belle’s bedside. For Beatrice believed in having two strings to her bow and she had written her aunt a second deluge of complaints and requests. Bemoaning the sprained ankle––and the probable regaining of three pounds which had been laboriously massaged away––Aunt Belle had called for Gaylord’s sympathy and support.

While Mary, rather perturbed yet unshaken in her convictions, returned to the office and Constantine had decided his blood pressure could not stand any traipsing round after folderols, Gaylord was eagerly taking notes and saying pretty nothings to the doleful Mrs. Todd, who relied utterly on his artistic judgment and promptness of action.

Whereupon Gaylord proudly rolled out of the Constantine gates in a motor car bearing Constantine’s monogram, and by late afternoon he had come to a most satisfactory understanding with decorators and antique dealers––an understanding which led 68 to an increase in the prices Beatrice was to pay and the splitting of the profits between one Gaylord Vondeplosshe and the tradesmen.

“A supper!” Mark Constantine demanded crisply that same evening, merely groaning when his sister told him that Gaylord had undertaken all the errands and was such a dear boy. “And send it up to my room––ham, biscuits, pie, and iced coffee, and I’m not at home if the lord mayor calls.”

He departed to the plainest room in the mansion and turned on an electric fan to keep him company. He sat watching the lawn men at their work, wondering what he was to do with this barn of a place. Beatrice had told him forcibly that she was not going to live in it. Wherein was the object of keeping it open for Belle Todd and himself when more and more he wished for semi-solitude? Noise and crowds and luxuries irritated him. He liked meals such as the one he had ordered, the plebeian joy of taking off tight shoes and putting on disreputable slippers, sitting in an easy-chair with his feet on another, while he read detective stories or adventurous romances with neither sense nor moral. He liked to relive in dream fashion the years of early endeavour––of his married life with Hannah. After he finished the reverie he would tell himself with a flash of honesty, “Gad, it might as well have happened to some other fellow––for all the good it does you.” Nothing seemed real to Constantine except his check book and his wife’s monument.

It was still to dawn upon him that his daughter partly despised him. He had always said that no one loved him but his child, and that no one but his child mattered so far as he was concerned. Since 69 Beatrice’s marriage he had become restless, wretched, desperately lonesome; he found himself missing Steve quite as much as he missed Beatrice. Their letters were unsatisfactory since they were chiefly concerned with things––endless things that they coveted or had bought or wanted in readiness for their return. As he sat watching the lawn men gossip he knitted his black brows and wondered if he ought to sell the mansion and be done with it. Then it occurred to him that grandchildren playing on the velvety lawn would make it quite worth while. With a thrill of anticipation he began to plan for his grandchildren and to wonder if they, too, would be eternally concerned with things.

As he recalled Mary’s defiance he chuckled. “A ten-dollar-a-week raise was cheap for such a woman,” he thought.

Meantime, Trudy informed the Faithful family at supper: “Gay has telephoned that he is coming to-night. Were you going to use the parlour, Mary?” A mere formality always observed for no reason at all.

“No, I’m going to water the garden. It’s as dry as Sahara.”

Luke groaned.

“Don’t make Luke help you. He’s stoop-shouldered enough from study without making him carry sprinkling cans,” Mrs. Faithful objected.

“Nonsense! It’s good for him, and he will be through in an hour.”

“Too late for the first movie show,” expostulated Luke.

“A world tragedy,” his sister answered.

“I wanted to go to-night,” her mother insisted. 70 “It’s a lovely story. Mrs. Bowen was in to tell me about it––all about a Russian war bride. They built a whole town and burnt it up at the end of the story. I guess it cost half a million––and there’s fighting in it, too.”

“All right, go and take Luke. But I don’t think the movies are as good for him as working in a garden.”

“You never want me to have pleasure. Home all day with only memories of the dead for company, and then you come in as cross as a witch, ready to stick your nose in a book or go dig in the mud! Excuse me, Trudy, but a body has to speak out sometimes. Your father to the life––reading and grubbing with plants. Oh, mother’s proud of you, Mary, but if you would only get yourself up a little smarter and go out with young people you’d soon enough want Luke to go out, too! I don’t pretend to know what your judgment toward your poor old mother would be!”

Mary’s day had included a dispute with a firm’s London representative, the Constantine incident, a session at the dentist’s as a noon-recess attraction, housecleaning the office, and two mutually contradictory wires from Steve. She laid her knife and fork down with a defiant little clatter.

“I can’t burn the candle at both ends. I work all day and I have to relax when I leave the office. If my form of a good time is to read or set out primroses it is nothing to cry thief for, is it? I want you to go out, mother, as you very well know. And you are welcome to fill the house with company. Only if I’m to do a man’s work and earn his wage I must claim my spare time for myself.”

71

“Now listen here, dear,” interposed Trudy, who took Mary’s part when it came to a real argument, “don’t get peeved. Let me buy your next dress and show you how to dance. You’ll be surprised what a difference it will make. You’ll get so you just hate ever to think of work.”

“Splendid! Who will pay the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker?” Mary thought of the wedding presents carelessly stacked about Beatrice’s apartment. One pile of them, as she measured expenses, would have paid the aforementioned gentlemen for a year or more.

“Now you’ve got her going,” Luke objected. “Say, Trudy, you don’t kill yourself tearing off any work at the shop!”

“Luke,” began his mother, “be a gentleman. Dear me, I wish I hadn’t said a word. To think of my children in business! Why, Luke ought to be attending a private school and going to little cotillion parties like my brothers did; and Mary in her own home.” She pressed her napkin to her eyes.

“I admit Mary carries me along on the pay roll––I’m Mary’s foolishness,” Trudy said, easily. “Mary’s a good scout even if she does keep us stepping. She has to fall down once in a while, and she fell hard when she hired me and took me in as a boarder.”

Mary flushed. “I try to make you do your share,” she began, “and–––”

“I ought to pay more board,” Trudy giggled at her own audacity. “But I won’t. You’re too decent to make me. You know I’m such a funny fool I’d go jump in the river if I got blue or things went wrong, and you like me well enough to not want that. Don’t worry about our Mary, Mrs. Faithful. Just 72 let her manage Luke and he won’t wander from her apron strings like he will if you and I keep him in tow.”

Luke made a low bow, scraping his chair back from the table. “I’ll go ahead and get reserved seats and mother can come when she’s ready,” he proposed.

Mrs. Faithful beamed with triumph. “That’s my son! Get them far enough back, the pictures blur if I’m too close.”

“I’ll do the dishes,” Mary said, briefly. “Go and get ready.”

“I’d wipe them only Gay is coming so early,” Trudy explained, glibly.

“I’d rather be alone.” Mary was piling up the pots and pans.

“Now, deary, if you don’t feel right about mother’s going,” her mother resumed a little later as she poked her head into the kitchen, “just say so. But I certainly want to see that town burnt up; and besides, it’s teaching Luke history. Dear me, your hair is dull. Why don’t you try that stuff Trudy uses?”

“Because I’m not Trudy. Good-bye.”

“You’re all nerves again. I’d certainly let someone else do the work.”

“I need a vacation.”

“That means you want to get away from us. Well, I try to keep the home together. Leave that coffeepot just as it is, I’ll want a drop when I get back.” Waddling out the door Mrs. Faithful left Mary to assault the dishes and long for Steve’s return.

“I wonder why the great plan did not make it possible for all folks to like their relatives?” she asked herself as she finally hung the tea towels on the line; “or their star boarder?”

73

Then she became engrossed in the way the newly set out plants had taken root. Bending over the flower beds she was hardly conscious that darkness had fallen over the earth––a heavenly, summer-cool darkness with veiled stars prophetic of a blessed shower. She repaired to the porch swing to dream her dreams of fluffs and frills, arrange a dream house and live therein. It should be quite unlike the Gorgeous Girl’s apartment––but a roomy, sprawling affair with old furniture that was used and loved and shabby, well-read books, carefully chosen pictures, dull rugs, and oddly shaped lamps, a shaggy old dog to lie before the open fireplace and be patted occasionally, fat blue jugs of Ragged Robin roses at frequent intervals. Perhaps there would be a baby’s toy left somewhere along the stairway leading to the nursery. When one has the cool of a summer’s night, a porch screened with roses and a comfortable swing, what does it matter if there are unlikable persons and china-shop apartment houses?

Had Mary known what was taking place in the front parlour it would not have jarred her from her dreams. For Gaylord, resplendent in ice-cream flannels, and Trudy, wearing an unpaid-for black-satin dress with red collar and cuffs, were both busier than the proverbial beaver planning their wedding. It was to be an informal and unexpected little affair, being the direct result of the Gorgeous Girl’s demands as to settling her household.

“You’ve no idea how jolly easy it was, Babseley. There was a dressing case I know Bea will keep––it brought me a cool hundred commission––it had just come in. I plunged and bought two altar scarfs 74 she can use for her reading stand––she likes such things, besides all the bona-fide orders. I’ve been working for fair––and I’ve made over a thousand dollars.”

Trudy kissed Bubseley between his pale little eyes. “You Lamb! Sure you won’t have to give it back or that they will tell?”

“Of course not! They’d give their own selves away. That’s the way such things are always done, y’know. I’ve an idea that I’ll go in seriously for the business by and by. I don’t feel any compunction; I’m entitled to every cent of it; in fact, I call it cheap for Bea at a thousand.”

“But will they really pay you?” Trudy was skeptical. It seemed such a prodigious amount for buying a few trifles.

“The Constantine credit is like the Bank of England. I’ll have my money and we’ll make our getaway before Bea arrives in town.”

“Why?” Trudy did not approve of this. The contrast between her marriage and the Gorgeous Girl’s wedding rankled.

Gay hesitated. “I want to go to New York and see concert managers and father’s friends,” he evaded. “Then we’ll visit my sister in Connecticut as long as she’ll have us. And when we come back––well, you’ll––you’ll know the smart ways better.”

He was a trifle afraid of Trudy and he did not know how best to advise her that her slips in speech and manners would be more easily remedied by setting her an example of the correct thing than by staying in Hanover and leading a cat-and-dog life, getting nowhere at all.

Trudy kissed him again. “Hurrah for the eternal 75 frolic!” she said, adding: “But we’ll know Beatrice and Steve socially, won’t we?”

“Of course!” he said, in helpless concession.

His one-cylinder little brain had not yet reckoned with Trudy’s determination to conquer the social arena. He knew he must have her to help him; his efforts with creditors were failing sadly of late. Besides, he admired her tremendously; he felt like a rake and a deuce of a chap when they went out together, and he relied on her vivacity––Pep had been his pet name for her before he originated Babseley––to carry him through. It really would be quite an easy matter to live on nothing a year until something turned up. The graft from Beatrice was the open sesame, however, and the Gorgeous Girl would never suspect the truth.

“Keep right on working hard,” Trudy said, fondly, as they kissed each other good-night. “I’ll tell Mary to-morrow. I want to leave my big trunk here because we might want to stay here for a few days when we come back.”

“Never!”––masterfully pointing his cane at the moon. “My wife is going to have her own apartment. One of father’s friends has built several apartment houses and he’ll be sure to let me in.”

“Are we dreaming?” Trudy asked, thinking of how indebted she was to Beatrice O’Valley, yet how she envied and hated her.

“No, Babseley, I’ll phone you to-morrow and come down. If you see me flying about in a machine don’t be surprised; I’m to use their big car as much as I like. But it would be a little thick to have us seen together––just yet.”

“I’ll see that the whole social set gets a draft from 76 me that will open their eyes,” Trudy promised, loath to have him go.

“If old man Constantine knew I drew that money down!” Gay chuckled with delight. “When his favourite after-dinner story is to tell how Steve O’Valley lay on his stomach and watched goats for an education.”

“I’d hate to have my finger between his teeth when he learns the truth,” Trudy prompted.

She spent half the night taking inventory of her wardrobe, her debts, and her personal charms, practising airs and graces before her mirror and calculating how long the thousand would last them. All the world was before her, to Trudy’s way of thinking. She would be Mrs. Gaylord Vondeplosshe, and with Gay’s name and her brain––well, to give Trudy’s own sentiments, they would soon be able to carry the whole show in their grip and use the baggage cars to bring back the profits!

77

CHAPTER V

Gaylord’s sudden marriage and departure for New York caused no small comment. In the Faithful family Mary and Luke stood against Mrs. Faithful, who declared with meaning emphasis that some girls had more sense than others and it was better to marry and make a mistake the first time than to remain an old maid. With Trudy’s style and high spirits she was going to carry Gaylord into the front ranks without any effort. Luke described the event by saying that a bad pair of disturbers had teamed for life, and relied upon Mary to take up the burden of the proof.

“Don’t mourn so, mother. I’m a happy old maid,” she insisted when the comments grew too numerous for her peace of mind. “Trudy was not the sort to blush unseen, and it’s a relief not to have to cover up her mistakes at the office. Everything will be serene once more. As for Gay’s future––I suppose he is likely to bring home anything from a mousetrap to a diamond tiara. I don’t pretend to understand his ways.”

“Of course it isn’t like Mrs. O’Valley’s wedding,” her mother resumed, with a resonant sniffle. “You have been so used to hearing about her ways that poor little Trudy seems cheap. Perhaps your mother and brother and the little home seem so, too. But we can’t all be Gorgeous Girls, and I think Trudy was right to take Gaylord when he had the money for a ring and a license.”

78

“He had more than that,” Mary ruminated. “People don’t walk to New York.”

“Did he win it on a horse race?” Luke had an eye to the future.

“Maybe his father’s friends helped him,” Mrs. Faithful added.

“Can’t prove anything by me.” Mary shook her head.

Neither Trudy nor Gaylord knew that all Beatrice’s bills were sent to Mary to discount, and Mary, not without a certain shrewdness, had her own ideas on the matter. But it amused more than it annoyed her. Gay might as well have a few hundred to spend in getting a wife and caretaker as tradesmen whose weakness it was to swell their profits beyond all respectability.

“I wonder where they will live.” Mrs. Faithful found the subject entirely too fascinating to let alone.

“Not here,” her daughter assured her. “And if you’d only say yes I could get such a sunny, pretty flat where the work would be worlds easier.”

“Leave my home? Never! It would be like uprooting an oak forest. Time for that when I am dead and gone.” The double chin quivered with indignation. “I don’t see why Trudy and Gay won’t come here and take the two front rooms. They’d be company for me.”

She approved of Trudy’s views of life as much as she disapproved and was rather afraid of this young woman who wanted to bustle her into trim house dresses instead of the eternal wrappers.

“I kept Trudy only because she needed work––and a home,” Mary said, frankly; “and because you wanted her. But my salary does nicely for us. Besides, it 79 would be a bad influence for Luke to have such a person as Gay about. We must make a man out of Luke.”

“Don’t go upsetting him. He eats his three good meals a day and always acts like a little gentleman. You’ll nag at him until he runs away like my brother Amos did.”

“Better run away from us than run over us,” Mary argued; “but there is no need of planning for Trudy’s return. Their home will be in a good part of the city, if it consists in merely hanging onto a lamp-post. You don’t realize that Gay is a bankrupt snob and married Trudy only because he could play off cad behind his pretty wife’s skirts. Men will like Trudy and the women ridicule and snub her until she finds she has a real use for her claws. Up to now she has only halfway kept them sharpened. In a few years you will find Mr. and Mrs. Gaylord Vondeplosshe in Hanover society with capital letters, hobnobbing with Beatrice O’Valley and her set and somehow managing to exist in elegance. Don’t ask how they will do it––but they will. However, they would never consider starting from our house. That would be getting off on a sprained ankle.”

Mrs. Faithful gulped the rest of her coffee. “No one has any use for me because I haven’t money. Our parlour was good enough for them to do their courting in, and if they don’t come and see me real often I’ll write Trudy a letter and tell her some good plain facts!”

“Be sure to say we all think Gay’s mother must have been awful fond of children to have raised him,” Luke suggested from the offing.

Mary tossed a sofa pillow at him and disappeared. She could have electrified her mother by telling her 80 that Steve was to return that morning, that the office was prepared to welcome him back, and that Mrs. O’Valley would be anchored at the telephone to get into communication with her dearest and best of friends.

As she walked to the street car she reproached herself for not having told the news. It was a tiny thing to tell a woman whose horizon was bounded by coffee pots, spotted wrappers, and inane movies.

“You’re mean in spots,” Mary told herself. “You know how it would have pleased her.”

She sometimes felt a maternal compassion for this helpless dear with her double chins and self-sacrificing past, and she wondered whether her father had not had the same attitude during the years of nagging reproach at his lack of material prosperity. She resolved to come home that night with a budget of news items concerning Steve’s return, even bringing a rose from the floral offering that was to be placed on his desk.

“After all, she’s mother,” Mary thought, rounding the corner leading to the office building, “and like most of us she does the best she can!”

She tried to maintain a calm demeanour in the office as she answered inquiries and opened the mail. But all the time she kept glancing at her desk clock. Half-past nine––of course he would be late––surely he must come by ten. She wished she had flung maidenly discretion to the winds and worn the white silk sport blouse she had just bought. But she had made herself dress in a crumpled waist of nondescript type. The floral piece on Steve’s long-deserted desk made her keep glancing up to smile at its almost funeral magnificence.

81

She answered a telephone call. Yes, Mr. O’Valley was expected––undoubtedly he would wish to reserve a plate for the Chamber of Commerce luncheon––unless they heard to the contrary they could do so. ... Oh, it was to include the wives and so on. Then reserve places for Mr. and Mrs. O’Valley. She hung up the receiver abruptly and went to making memoranda.

Even if she demanded and would receive a share of Steve’s time and attention it would be the thankless, almost bitter portion––such as reserving plates for Mr. and Mrs. O’Valley or O.K.ing Mrs. O’Valley’s bills. Still it was hers, awarded to her because of keenness of brain and faithfulness of action. Steve needed her as much as he needed to come home to his miniature palace to watch the Gorgeous Girl display her latest creation, to be able to take the Gorgeous Girl fast in his arms and say: “You are mine––mine––mine!” very likely punctuating the words with kisses. Yet he must return each day to Mary Faithful and say: “You are my right-hand man; I need you.”

“A penny for your thoughts.” Steve O’Valley was standing beside her. “You look as if work agreed with you. Say something nice now––that a long holiday has improved me!”

She managed to put a shaking hand into his, wondering if she betrayed her thoughts. Being as tall as Steve she was able to look at him, not up at him; and there they stood––the handsome, reckless man with just a suggestion of nervous tension in his Irish blue eyes, and the plain young woman in a rumpled linen blouse.

“Ah––so I don’t please,” he bantered. “Well, 82 tell us all about it. I’ve a thousand questions––my father-in-law says you are the only thing I have that he covets. How about that?” He led the way into his office, Mary following.

Then he fell upon his mountain of mail and memoranda, demands for this charity and that patriotic subscription, and Mary began a careful explanation of affairs and they sat talking and arguing until the general superintendent looked in to suggest that the shop might like to have Mr. O’Valley say hello.

“It’s nearly eleven,” Steve exclaimed, “and we haven’t begun to say a tenth of all there is to discuss. See the funeral piece, Hodges? Why didn’t you label it ‘Rest in pieces’ and be done with it, eh? I shall now appear to make a formal speech.” Here he cut a rosebud from the big wreath and handed it gravely to Mary; he cut a second one and fastened it in his own buttonhole. “Lead me out, Hodges. I’m a bit unsteady––been playing too long.”

Mary stood in the doorway, one hand caressing the little rose. That Beatrice should have had the flower was her first thought. Then it occurred to her that Beatrice would have all the flowers at the formal affairs to be given the bridal couple, besides sitting opposite Steve at his own table. She no longer felt that she had stolen the rose or usurped attention. There was a clapping of hands and the usual laughter which accompanies listening to any generous proprietor’s speech, a trifle forced perhaps but very jolly sounding. Then Steve returned to his office to become engrossed in conversation with Mary until Mark Constantine dropped in to bowl him off to the club for luncheon.

83

“She’s kept things humming, hasn’t she?” Constantine asked, sinking into the nearest chair.

“A prize,” Steve said, proudly. “I don’t find a slip-up any place. I’ll be back at two, Miss Faithful, in case any one calls.... How is Bea?” His voice softened noticeably.

Mary slipped away.

“Bea doesn’t like one half of her things and the other half are so much better than the apartment that she says they don’t show up,” her father admitted, drolly. “She is tired to death––so you’ll find her at home, my boy, with a box of candy and the latest novel. Belle was talking her head off when I left the house and the girls keep calling her on the telephone for those little three-quarters-of-an-hour hello talks. It seems to me that for rich girls, my daughter and her friends are the busiest, most tired women I ever knew––and yet do the least.” He put on his hat and waited for Steve to open the door.

“I don’t pretend to understand them,” Steve answered. “Maybe that’s why I’m so happy. Bea fusses if the shade of draperies doesn’t match her gown, and if Monster has a snarl in her precious hair it is cause for a tragedy. But I just grin and go along and presently she has forgotten all about it.”

“I tried to get that young woman helper of yours to help me fix up Bea’s things,” Constantine complained. “Let’s walk to the club––my knees are going stiff on me.”

“Well?”

“She looked round the apartment and plain refused to put away another woman’s pots and pans. It was just spunk. I don’t know that I blame her. So Belle got that low order of animal life–––”

84

“Meaning Gaylord?”

“Yes; and now the husband, I understand, of one of your thinnest clad and thinnest brained former clerks. Gay was in his element; he kept the machine working overtime and flattered Belle until he had everything his own way. Yet Beatrice seems quite satisfied with his achievements.”

“You must have been hanging round the house this morning.”

“I couldn’t get down to brass tacks,” he admitted. “You’ve had her all summer––but you can bet your clothes you wouldn’t have had her if I hadn’t been willing.” He slapped Steve on the shoulder good-naturedly.

Steve nodded briskly. Then he suggested: “Bea has the New York idea rather strong. Has she ever hinted it to you?”

“Don’t let that flourish, Steve. Kill it at the start. She knew better than to try to wheedle me into going. I’m smarter than most of the men round these parts but I’d be fleeced properly by the New York band of highbinders if I tried to go among them. And you’re not as good at the game as I am. Not–––” He paused as if undecided how much would be best to tell Steve. He evidently decided that generalities would be the wisest arguments, so he continued: “Don’t wince––it’s the truth, and there must be no secrets between us from now on. Besides, you’re in love and you can’t concentrate absolutely. My best advice to you is to stay home and tend to your knitting.

“You and Bea can go play round New York all you like. Let the New York crowd come to see you and be entertained, they’ll be glad to eat your dinners 85 and drink your wine if they don’t have to pay for it. We can get away with Hanover but we’d be handcuffed if we tried New York. When I made a hundred thousand dollars I was tempted to try New York instead of staying here––to make Bea the most gorgeous girl in the metropolis. But horse sense made me pass it by and stay on my own home diamond. So I’ve made a good many more hundreds of thousands and, what’s to the point, I’ve kept ’em!”

Here the conversation drifted into more technical business detail with Steve expostulating and contradicting and Constantine frowning at his son-in-law through his bushy eyebrows, admiring him prodigiously all the while.

Beatrice had telephoned Steve’s office, to be told that her husband was at lunch and would not be in until two o’clock.

“Have him come to our apartment,” she left word, “just as soon as he can. I am just leaving Mr. Constantine’s house to go there.”

After which she began telling Aunt Belle good-bye.

“Dear me, Bea, what a wonderful hat!” her aunt sighed. “I never saw anything more becoming.”

It took ten minutes to admire Bea’s costume of rosewood crape and the jewelled-cap effect, somewhat like Juliet’s, caught over each ear by a pink satin rose.

“Steve doesn’t appreciate anything in the way of costumes,” she complained. “He just says: ‘Yes, deary, I love you, and anything you wear suits me.’ Quite discouraging and so different from the other boys.”

“I’d call it very comfortable,” suggested her aunt.

“I suppose so––but comfortable things are often 86 tiresome. It is tiresome, too, to see too much of the same person. I was really bored to death in the Yosemite––Steve is so primitive––he wanted to stay there for days and days.”

“Steve comes from primitive people,” her aunt said, soberly, not realizing her own humour.

“Don’t mention it. Didn’t he force me to go to Virginia City, the most terrible little ghost world of tumbledown shacks and funny one-eyed, one-suspendered men, and old women smoking pipes and wearing blue sunbonnets! He was actually sentimental and enthusiastic about it all, trying to hunt up old cronies of his grandfather’s––I was cross as could be until we came back to Reno. Now Reno is interesting.”

She spent the better part of an hour describing the divorcees and their adventures.

“Well, I’m off for home. I think I shall entertain the Red Cross committee first of all. It’s only right, I believe”––the dove eyes very serious––“they’ve been under such terrible strains. I’m going to send a large bundle of clothes for the Armenian Relief, too. Oh, aunty, the whole world seems under a cloud, doesn’t it? But I met the funniest woman in Pasadena; she actually teed her golf ball on a valuable Swiss watch her husband had given her! She said her only thrills in life came from making her husband cross.”

“Was he––when he found it out?”

“No; she was dreadfully disappointed. He called her a naughty child and bought her another!”

When Beatrice reached the apartment she found Steve standing on the steps looking anxiously up and down the street.

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“What’s happened?” he asked, half lifting her out of the car.

“Don’t! People will see us. I was telling aunty about Reno. Oh, it’s so good to be here!” as she came inside her own door. “I hope people will let me alone the rest of the day. I’m just a wreck.” She found a box of chocolates and began to eat them.

“A charming-looking wreck, I’ll say.” He stooped to kiss her.

The rose-coloured glasses were still attached to Steve’s naturally keen eyes. Like many persons he knew a multitude of facts but was quite ignorant concerning vital issues. He had spent his honeymoon in rapt and unreal fashion. He had realized his boyhood dream of returning to Nevada a rich and respected man with a fairy-princess sort of wife. The deadly anaesthesia of unreality which these get-rich-quick candidates of to-day indulge in at the outset of their struggle still had Steve in its clutch. He had not even stirred from out its influence. He had accomplished what he had set out to accomplish––and he was now about to realize that there is a distinct melancholy in the fact that everyone needs an Aladdin’s window to finish. But under the influence of the anæsthesia he had proposed to have an everlasting good time the rest of his life, like the closing words of a fairy tale: “And then the beautiful young princess and the brave young prince, having slain the seven-headed monster, lived happily ever, ever after!”

With this viewpoint, emphasized by the natural conceit of youth, Steve had passed his holiday with the Gorgeous Girl.

“What did you want, darling?” he urged.

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“To talk to you––I want you to listen to my plan. You are to come with me to New York for the fall opera and all the theatres––oh, along in November. It’s terribly dull here. Jill Briggs and her husband and some of the others are going, and we can take rooms at the Astor and all be together and have a wonderful time!”

“I’d rather stay in our own home,” he pleaded. “It’s such fun to have a real home. We can entertain, you know. Besides, I’m the worker and you are the player, and I don’t understand your sort of life any more than you can understand mine. So you must play and let me look on––and love me, that’s all I’ll ever ask.”

“You’re a dear,” was his reward; “but we’ll go to New York?”

“I’ll have to take you down and leave you––I’m needed at the office.”

“But I’d be the odd one––I’d have to have a partner. Steve, dear, you don’t have to grub. When we were engaged you always had time for me.”

“Because you had so little for me! And so I always shall have time for you,” the anæsthesia causing his decision. “Besides, those were courtship days––and I wasn’t quite so sure of you, which is the way of all men.” He kissed her hair gently.

She drew away and rearranged a lock. “I don’t want a husband who won’t play with me.”

“We’ll fix it all right, don’t worry. Now was that all you wanted?”

“I want you to stay home and go driving with me. I want you to call on some people––and look at a new cellaret I’d like to buy. It is expensive, but no one else would have one anywhere near as charming. I 89 need you this afternoon––you’re so calm and strong, and my head aches. I’m always tired.”

“Yet you never work,” he said, almost unconsciously.

“My dear boy, society is the hardest work in the world. I’m simply dragged to a frazzle by the end of the season. Besides, there is all my war work and my clubs and my charities. And I’ve just promised to take an advanced course in domestic science.”

“I see,” Steve said, meekly.

“I think it is the duty of rich women to know all about frying things as well as eating them,” she said, as she took a third caramel.

“Quite true. Having money isn’t always keeping it”

“Oh, papa has loads of money––enough for all of us,” she remarked, easily. “It isn’t that. I’d never cook if I were poor, anyway; that would be the last thing I’d ever dream of doing. It’s fun to go to the domestic-science class as long as all my set go. Well––will you be a nice angel-man and stay home to amuse your fractious wife?”

“I’ll call Miss Faithful on the phone and say I’m going to play hooky,” he consented. “By the way, you must come down to the office and say hello to her when you get the time.”

Beatrice kissed him. “Must I? I hate offices. Besides, Gaylord has married your prettiest clerk, and there will be no one to play with me except my husband.”

“Funny thing––that marriage,” Steve commented. “If it was any one but Gay I’d send condolences for loading the office nuisance onto him.”

“Wasn’t she any use at all?” she asked, curiously.

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“None––always having a headache and being excused for the day. That was the only thing I ever questioned in Mary Faithful––why she engaged Trudy and took her into her own home as a boarder.”

“Oh, so Mary isn’t perfection? Don’t be too hard on the other girl. I’d be quite as useless if I ever had to work. I’d do just the same––have as many headaches as the firm would stand for, and marry the first man who asked me.”

“But think of marrying Gay!”

“Poor old Gay––his father was a dear, and he is terribly well behaved. Besides, see how obliging he is. Your Miss Faithful refused to help me out, and Gay ran his legs off to get everything I wanted. I’ll never be rude to Gay as long as he amuses me.”

“That’s the thing that leads them all, isn’t it, princess?”

91

CHAPTER VI

After the first round of excessively formal entertainments for Mr. and Mrs. O’Valley, Steve found a mental hunger suddenly asserting itself. It was as if a farm hand were asked to subsist upon a diet of weak tea and wafers.

In the first place, no masculine mind can quite admit the superiority of a feminine mind when it concerns handling said masculine mind’s business affairs. Though Steve insisted that Mary had done quite as well as he would have done, he told himself secretly that he must get down to hard work and go over the letters and memoranda which had developed during his absence.

With quiet amusement Mary had agreed to the investigation, watching him prowl among the files with the same tolerant attitude she would have entertained toward Luke had he insisted that he could run the household more efficiently than a mere sister.

“Poor tired boy,” she used to think when Steve would come into the office with a fagged look on his handsome face and new lines steadily growing across his forehead. “You don’t realize yet––you haven’t begun to realize.”

And Steve, trying to catch up with work and plan for the future, to respond graciously to every civic call made upon him, would find himself enmeshed in a desperate combination of Beatrice’s dismay over the cut of her new coat, her delight at the latest scandal, 92 her headaches, the special order for glacé chestnuts he must not forget, the demand that he come home for luncheon just because she wanted him to talk to, the New York trip looming ahead with Bea coaxing him to stay the entire time and let business slide along as it would. All the while the anæsthesia of unreality was lessening in its effect now that he had attained his goal.

The rapt adoration he felt for his wife was in a sense a rather subtle form of egotism he felt for himself. The Gorgeous Girl or rather any Gorgeous Girl personified his starved dreams and frantic ambitions. He had turned his face toward such a goal for so many tense years, goading himself on and breathing in the anæsthesia of indifference and unreality to all else about him that having obtained it he now paused exhausted and about to make many disconcerting discoveries. Had the Gorgeous Girl had hair as black as his own or a nose such as Mary Faithful’s she would have still been his goal, symbol of his aims.

Having finished the long battle Steve now felt an urge to begin to battle for something else besides wealth and social position. He felt ill at ease in Beatrice’s salon and among her friends, who all seemed particularly inane and ridiculous, who were all just as busy and tired and nervous as Beatrice was for some strange reason, and who considered it middle class not to smoke and common to show any natural sentiment or emotion. He soon found it was quite the thing to display the temperament of an oyster when any vital issue was discussed or any play, for example, had a scene of deep and inspiring words. A queer little smirk or titter was the proper 93 applause, but one must wax enthusiastic and superlative over a clever burglary, a new-style dance, a chafing-dish concoction, or, a risqué story retold in drawing-room language.

Before his marriage Beatrice had always been terribly rushed and he had had more time in which to work and glow with pride at the nearing of his goal. She kept him at arm’s length very cleverly anchored with the two-carat engagement ring and Steve had to fight for time and plead for an audience. It fired his imagination, making him twice as keen for the final capture.

But when two persons live in the same apartment, notwithstanding the eleven rooms and so on, a monotony of existence pervades even the grandeur of velvet-panelled walls. There are the inevitable three meals a day to be gone through with––five meals if tea and a supper party are counted. There are the same ever-rising questions as to the cook’s honesty and the chauffeur’s graft in the matter of buying, new tires. There are just so many persons who have to be wined and dined and who revenge themselves by doing likewise to their former host; the everlasting exchanging of courtesies and pleasantries––all the dull, decent habits of ultra living.

Steve found his small store of possessions huddled into a corner, his pet slippers and gown graciously bestowed upon a passing panhandler, and he was obliged to don a very correct gray “shroud,” as he named it in thankless terms, and to put his cigar and cigar ashes into something having the earmarks of an Etruscan coal scuttle, though Beatrice said it was a priceless antique Gay had bought for a song! There were many times when Steve would have 94 liked to roam about his house in plebeian shirt sleeves, eat a plain steak and French-fried potatoes with a hunk of homemade pie as a finish, and spend the evening in that harmless, disorderly fashion known to men of doing nothing but stroll about smoking, playing semi-popular records, reading the papers, and very likely having another hunk of pie at bedtime.

Besides all this there were the topics of the day to discuss. During his courtship love was an all-absorbing topic. There were many questions that Beatrice asked that required intricate and tiring answers. During the first six weeks of living at the apartment Steve realized a telling difference between men and women is that a woman demands a specific case––you must rush special incidents to back up any theory you may advance––whereas men, for the most part, are content with abstract reasoning and supply their own incidents if they feel inclined. Also that a finely bred fragile type of woman such as Beatrice inspires both fear and a maudlin sort of sympathy, and that man is prevented from crossing such a one to any great extent since men are as easily conquered by maudlin sympathy as by fear.

When a yellow-haired child with dove-coloured eyes manages to squeeze out a tear and at the same moment depart in wrath to her room and lock the doors, refusing to answer––the trouble being why in heaven’s name must a pound-and-a-half spaniel called Monster, nothing but a flea-bearing dust mop, do nothing but sit and yap for chocolates?––what man is going to dare do otherwise than suppress a little profanity and then go and whisper apologies at the keyhole?

After several uncomfortable weeks of this sort of 95 mental chaos Steve determined to do what many business men do––particularly the sort starting life in an orphan asylum and ending by having residence pipe organs and Russian wolfhounds frolicking at their heels––to bury himself in his work and defend his seclusion by never refusing to write a check for his wife. When he finally reached this decision he was conscious of a strange joy.

Everything was a trifle too perfect to suit Steve. The entire effect was that of the well-set stage of a society drama. Beatrice was too correctly gowned and coiffured, always upstage if any one was about, her high-pitched, thin voice saying superlative nothings upon the slightest provocation; or else she was dissolving into tears and tantrums if no one was about.

Steve could not grasp the wherefore of having such stress laid upon the exact position of a floor cushion or the colour scheme for a bridge luncheon––he would have so rejoiced in really mediocre table service, in less precision as to the various angles of the shades or the unrumpled condition of the rugs. He had not the oasis Mark Constantine had provided for himself when he kept his room of old-fashioned trappings apart from the rest of the mansion.

Steve needed such a room. He planned almost guiltily upon building a shack in the woods whither he could run when things became too impossible for his peace of mind. If he could convince his wife that a thing was smart or different from everything else its success and welcome in their house were assured. But an apple pie, a smelly pipe, a maidless dinner table, or a disorderly den had never been considered smart in Beatrice’s estimation, and Steve never attempted trying to change her point of view.

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Beatrice wondered, during moments of seriousness, how it was that this handsome cave man of hers rebelled so constantly against the beauty and correctness of the apartment and yet never really disgraced her as her own father would have done. It gave her added admiration for Steve though she felt it would be a mistake to tell him so. She did not believe in letting her husband see that she was too much in love with him.

Despite his growls and protests about this and that, and his ignorance as to the things in life Beatrice counted paramount, Steve adapted himself to the new environment with a certain poise that astonished everyone. The old saying “Every Basque a noble” rang true in this descendant of a dark-haired, romantic young woman whom his grandfather had married. There was blood in Steve which Beatrice might have envied had she been aware of it. But Steve was in ignorance, and very willingly so, regarding his ancestors. There had merely been “my folks”––which began and ended the matter.

Still it was the thoroughbred strain which the Basque woman had given her grandson that enabled Steve to be master of his house even if he knew very little of what it was all about. It was fortunate for his peace of mind––and pocketbook––that Beatrice had accepted the general rumour of a goat-tending ancestry and pried no further. Had she ever glimpsed the genealogy tables of the Benefacio family, from which Steve descended, she would have had the best time of all; coats of arms and family crests and mottoes would have been the vogue; a trip to the Pyrenees would have followed; mantillas and rebozos would have crowded her wardrobe, and Steve 97 would have been forced to learn Spanish and cultivate a troubadourish air.

Moreover, the Gorgeous Girl was not willing that her husband be buried in business. She could not have so good a time without him––besides, it was meet that he acquired polish. Her father was a different matter; everyone knew his ways and would be as likely to try to change the gruff, harsh-featured man as to try surveying Gibraltar with a penny ruler. Now Beatrice had married Steve because cave men were rather the mode, cave men who were wonderfully successful and had no hampering relatives. Besides, her father favoured Steve and he would not have been amiable had he been forced to accept a son-in-law of whom he did not approve. Mark Constantine had never learned graciousness of the heart, nor had his child.

So Beatrice proceeded to badger Steve whenever he pleaded business, with the result that she kept dropping in at his office, sometimes bringing friends, coaxing him to close his desk and come and play for the rest of the day. Sometimes she would peek in at Mary Faithful’s office and baby talk––for Steve’s edification––something like this:

“Ise a naughty dirl––I is––want somebody to play wif me––want to be amoosed. Do oo care? Nice, busy lady––big brain.”

Often she would bring a gift for Mary in her surface generous fashion––a box of candy or a little silk handkerchief. She pitied Mary as all butterflies pity all ants, and she little knew that as soon as she had departed Mary would open the window to let fresh air drive out distracting perfume, and would look at the useless trifle on her desk with scornful amusement.

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Before the New York trip Steve took refuge in his first deliberate lie to his wife. He had lied to himself throughout his courtship but was most innocent of the offence.

“If Mrs. O’Valley telephones or calls please say I have gone out to the stockyards,” he told Mary. “And will you lend me your office for the afternoon? I’m so rushed I must be alone where I can work without interruption.”

Mary gathered up her papers. “I’ll keep you under cover.” She was smiling.

“What’s the joke?”

“I was thinking of how very busy idle people always are and of how much time busy people always manage to make for the idle people’s demands.”

He did not answer until he had collected his work materials. Then he said: “I should like to know just what these idle people do with themselves but I shall never have the time to find out.” He vanished into Mary’s office, banging the door.

Beatrice telephoned that afternoon, only to be given her husband’s message.

“I’ll drive out to the stockyards and get him,” she proposed.

“He went with some men and I don’t believe I’d try it if I were you,” Mary floundered.

“I see. Well, have him call me up as soon as he comes in. It is very important.”

When Steve reached home that night he found Beatrice in a well-developed pout.

“Didn’t you get my message?” she demanded, sharply.

“Just as I was leaving the office. I looked in 99 there on––on my way back. I saw no use in telephoning then. What is it, dear?”

“It’s too late now. You have ruined my day.”

“Sorry. What is too late?”

“I wanted you to go to Amityville with me; there is a wonderful astrologer there who casts life horoscopes. He predicted this whole war and the Bolsheviki and bombs and everything, and I wanted him to do ours. Alice Twill says he is positively uncanny.”

Steve shook his head. “No long-haired cocoanut throwers for mine,” he said, briefly, unfolding his paper.

“But I wanted you to go.”

“Well, I do not approve of such things; they are a waste of time and money.”

“I have my own money,” she informed him, curtly.

Steve laid aside the paper. “I have known that for some time.”

“Besides, it is rude to refuse to call me when I have asked you to do so. It makes me ridiculous in the eyes of your employees.”

Recalling the shift of offices Steve suppressed a smile. “It was nothing important, Bea, and I am mighty busy. Your father never had time to play; he worked a great deal harder than I have worked.”

“I can’t help that. You must not expect me to be a little stay-at-home. You knew that before we were even engaged. Besides, I’m no child–––”

“No, but you act like one.” He spoke almost before he thought. “You are a woman nearly twenty-six years old, yet you haven’t the poise of girls eighteen that I have known. Still, they were farm or working girls. I’ve sometimes wondered 100 what it is that makes you and your friends always seem so childish and naïve––at times. Aren’t you ever going to grow up––any of you?”

“Do you want a pack of old women?” she demanded. “How can you find fault with my friends? You seem to forget how splendidly they have treated you.”

A cave man must be muzzled, handcuffed, and Under the anæsthetic of unreality and indifference to be a satisfactory husband for a modern Gorgeous Girl.

“Why shouldn’t they treat me splendidly? I have never robbed or maltreated any of them. Tell me something. It is time we talked seriously. We can’t exist on the cream-puff kind of conversation. What in the world has your way of going through these finishing schools done for you?”

The dove-coloured eyes flickered angrily. “I had a terribly good time,” she began. “Besides, it’s the proper thing––girls don’t come out at twenty and marry off and let that be the end of it. You really have a much better time now if you wait until you are twenty-five, and then you somehow have learned how to be a girl for an indefinite period. As for the finishing school in America––well, we had a wonderful sorority.”

“I’ve met college women who were clear-headed persons deserving the best and usually attaining it––but I’ve never taken a microscope to the sort of women playing the game from the froth end. I’m wondering what your ideas were.”

“You visited me––you met my friends––my chaperons––you wrote me each day.”

“I was in love and busy making my fortune. I 101 was as shy as a backwoods product––you know that––and afraid you would be carried off by someone else before I could come up to the sum your father demanded of me. I have nothing but a hazy idea as to a great many girls of all sorts and sizes––and mostly you.”

“Well, we had wonderful lectures and things; and I had a wonderful crush on some of the younger teachers––that is a great deal of fun.”

“Crushes?”

“You must have crushes unless you’re a nobody––and there’s nothing so much a lark. You select your crush and then you rush her. I had a darling teacher, she is doing war work in Paris now. She was a doll. I adored her the moment I saw her and I sent her presents and left flowers in her room, orchids on Sundays, until she made me stop. One day a whole lot of us who had been rushing her clipped off locks of our hair and fastened them in little gauze bags and we strung a doll clothes line across her room and pinned the little bags on it and left a note for her saying: ‘Your scalp line!’”

“What did that amount to?”

“Oh, it was fun. And I had another crush right after that one. Then some of the classes were interesting. I liked psychology best of all because you could fake the answers and cram for exams more easily. Math. and history require facts. There was one perfectly thrilling experience with fish. You know fish distinguish colours, one from the other, and are guided by colour sense rather than a sense of smell. We had red sticks and green sticks and blue sticks in a tank of fish, and for days we put the fish food on the green sticks and the fish would swim 102 right over to get it, and then we put it on the red sticks and they still swam over to the green sticks and waited round––so it was recognizing colour and not the food. And a lot of things like that.”

Steve laughed. “I hope the fish wised up in time.”

Beatrice looked at him disapprovingly. “If you had gone to college it might have made a great difference,” she said.

“Possibly,” he admitted; “but I’ll let the rest of the boys wait on the fishes. Did you go to domestic science this morning?”

“Yes, it was omelet. Mine was like leather. The gas stove makes my head ache. But we are going to have a Roman pageant to close the season––all about a Roman matron, and that will be lots of fun.”

“You eat too much candy; that is what makes your head ache,” he corrected.

She pretended not to hear him. “It is time to dress.”

“Don’t say there’s a party to-night,” he begged.

“Of course there is, and you know it. The Homers are giving a dinner for their daughter. Everyone is to wear their costumes wrong side out. Isn’t that clever? I laid out a white linen suit for you; it will look so well turned inside out; and I am going to wear an organdie that has a wonderful satin lining. There is no reason why we must be frumps.”

“I’d rather stay home and play cribbage,” Steve said, almost wistfully. “There’s a rain creeping up. Let’s not go!”

“I hate staying home when it is raining.” Beatrice went into her room to try the effect of a sash wrong side out. “It is so dull in a big drawing room 103 when there are just two people,” she added, as Steve appeared in the doorway.

“Two people make a home,” he found himself answering.

The Gorgeous Girl glanced at him briefly, during which instant she seemed quite twenty-six years old and the spoiled daughter of a rich man, the childish, senseless part of her had vanished. “Would you please take Monster into the kitchen for her supper?” she asked, almost insolently.

So the owner of the O’Valley Leather Works found his solace in tucking the pound-and-a-half spaniel under his arm and trying to convince himself that he was all wrong and a self-made man must keep a watch on himself lest he become a boor!

The day the O’Valleys left for New York in company with three other couples Mr. and Mrs. Gaylord Vondeplosshe arrived in Hanover, having visited until their welcome was not alone worn out but impossible ever to be replaced. A social item in the evening paper stated that they had taken an apartment at the Graystone and would be at home to their friends––whoever they might be.

If Gay’s club and his friends had determined merely to be polite and not welcome his wife, Trudy had determined that they would not only welcome her but insist upon being helpful to them; as for her former associates––they would be treated to a curt bow. This, however, did not include the Faithfuls. Mary was not to be ignored, nor did Trudy wish to ignore her. All the good that was in Trudy responded to Mary’s goodness. She never tried to be to Mary––no one did more than once. Nor did she 104 try to flatter her. She was truly sorry for Mary’s colourless life, truly grieved that Mary would not consent to shape her eyebrows. But she respected her, and it was to Mary’s house that Mrs. Vondeplosshe repaired shortly after her arrival.

It was quite true that Beatrice Constantine would have developed much as Trudy had were the pampered person compelled to earn her living, and, like Trudy, too, would have married a half portion, bankrupt snob. As Trudy dashed into the Faithful living room, kissing Mary and her mother and shaking a finger at Luke, Mary thought what a splendid imitation she was of Beatrice returning from her honeymoon.

“As pretty as a picture,” Mrs. Faithful declared, quite chirked up by the bridal atmosphere. “How do you do it, Trudy? And why didn’t you write us something besides postals? They always seem like printed handbills to me.”

“Especially mine,” Luke protested. “One of Sing Sing with the line: ‘I am thinking of you.’”

Trudy giggled. “I didn’t have a minute and I bought postals in flocks. Oh, I adore New York! I’m wild to live there. I nearly passed away in New England, but of course we had to stay as long as they would have us.”

She looked at herself in a mirror, conscious of Mary’s amused expression. She wore a painfully bright blue tailored suit––she had made the skirt herself and hunted up a Harlem tailor to do the jacket––round-toed, white leather shoes stitched with bright blue, white silk stockings, an aviatrix cap of blue suéde, and a white fox fur purchased at half price at a fire sale.

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“I haven’t any new jewellery except my wedding ring,” she mourned. “I expected Gay’s sister to give me one of her mother’s diamond earrings––I think she might have. They are lovely stones––but she never made a move that way––she’s horrid. As soon as I can afford to be independent I shall cut her, for she did her best to politely ask us to leave.”

“You were there several weeks, weren’t you?” Mary ventured.

“Yes––I grew tame. I learned a lot from her––I was pretty crude in some ways.” Which was true. Trudy was quite as well-bred looking, at first glance, as the Gorgeous Girl. “It is always better to get your experience where the neighbours aren’t watching. I didn’t lose a minute. If I never did an honest day’s work for Steve O’Valley I worked like a steam engine learning how to be a real lady, the sort Gay tried to marry but couldn’t!”

“As if you weren’t a little lady at all times,” Mrs. Faithful added.

“Of course we are stony broke but Gay’s brother-in-law just had to loan us some money in order to have us go. They gave us fifty dollars for a wedding present. Well, it was better than nothing. Gay has talked to a lot of concert managers and he’s going to have some wonderful attractions next season. People have never taken Gaylord seriously; he really has had to discover himself, and he is–––”

“Are you practising small talk on me?” Mary asked.

“You’ve said it,” Trudy admitted. “That last is the way I’m going to talk about Gaylord to his friends. I’ll make him a success if he will only mind me. Just think––I’ll be calling on Beatrice O’Valley 106 before long! She will have to know me because Gay helped furnish her apartment and was one of her ushers. It will mean everything for us to know her––and I’m never going to appear at all down and out, either. People never take you seriously if you seem to need money. Debt can’t frighten me. I was raised on it. All I need is Gay’s family reputation and my own hair and teeth and I’ll breeze in before any of the other entries. I came to ask if you won’t come to see where I live?” She smiled her prettiest. “Gay is at his club and we can talk. It was quite a bomb in the enemies’ camp when he married––people just can’t dun a married man like they do a bachelor.”

“I’ll come next week.” Mary tried putting off the evil day.

“No––now. I want your advice––and to show you my clothes.”

“You will have clothes, Trudy, when you don’t have food.”

“You have to these days––no good time unless you do.”

She kissed Mrs. Faithful and promised to have them all up for dinner. Then she tucked her arm in Mary’s and pranced down the street with her, talking at top speed of how horrid it was that they had to walk and not drive in a cab like Beatrice, and concluding with a dissertation on Gaylord’s mean disposition.

“I’m not mean, Mary, unless I want to accomplish something––but Gaylord is mean on general principle. He sulks and tells silly lies when you come to really know him. Oh, I’m not madly in love––but we can get along without throwing things. It’s 107 better than marrying a clod-hopper who couldn’t show me anything better than his mother’s green-plush parlour.”

“Doesn’t it seem hard to have to pretend to love him?”

“No, he’s so stupid,” said the debonair Mrs. Vondeplosshe as she brought Mary up before the entrance of the Graystone, a cheap apartment house with a marble entrance that extended only a quarter of the way up; from there on ordinary wood and marbleized paper finished the deed. The Vondeplosshes had a rear apartment. Their windows looked upon ash cans and delivery entrances, the front apartments with their bulging bay windows being twenty-five dollars a month more rent. As it was, they were paying forty-five, and very lucky to have the chance to pay it.

Trudy unlocked the door with a flourish. All that Trudy had considered as really essential to the making of a home was a phonograph and a pier glass; the rest was simple––rent a furnished place and wear out someone else’s things. The bandbox of a place with four cell-like rooms was by turns pitiful and amusing to Mary Faithful.

“We are just starting from here,” Trudy reminded her as she watched the gray eyes flicker with humour or narrow with displeasure. “Wait and see––we’ll soon be living neighbour to the O’Valleys. Besides, there is such an advantage in being married. You don’t have to worry for fear you’ll be an–––”

“Old maid,” finished Mary. “Out with it! You can’t frighten me. I hope you and Gay never try changing your minds at the same time, for it would be a squeeze.”

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She selected a fragile gilt chair in the tiny living room with its imitation fireplace and row of painted imitation books in the little bookcase. This was in case the tenants had no books of their own––which the Vondeplosshes had not. If they possessed a library they could easily remove the painted board and give it to the janitor for safekeeping. There were imitation Oriental rugs and imitation-leather chairs and imitation-mahogany furniture, plated silver, and imitations of china and of linen were to be found in the small three-cornered dining room, which resembled a penurious wedge of cake, Mary thought as she tried saying something polite. The imitation extended to the bedroom with its wall bed and built-in chiffonier and dresser of gaudy walnut. Trudy had promptly cluttered up the last-mentioned article with smart-looking cretonne and near-ivory toilet articles. There was even a pathetic little wardrobe trunk they had bought for $28.75 in New York, and Trudy had painstakingly soaked off old European hotel labels she had found on one of Gay’s father’s satchels and repasted them on the trunk to give the impression of travel and money.

The kitchen was nothing but a dark hole with a rusty range and nondescript pots and pans. “Being in the kitchen gets me nothing, so why bother about it?” Trudy explained, hardly opening the door. “We have no halls or furnace to care for, and an apartment house sounds so well when you give an address. I wish we could have afforded a front one; it will be hard to have people climbing through the back halls. I have put in a good supply of canned soups and vegetables and powdered puddings, and we can save a lot on our food. We’ll 109 be invited out, too, and when we eat at home I can get a meal in a few minutes and I’ll make Gay wash the dishes. Besides, I have a wonderful recipe for vanishing cream that his sister bought in Paris, and I’m going to have a little business myself, making it to supply to a few select customers as a favour. I’ll sell small jars for a dollar and large ones for three, and I can make liquid face powder, too. Oh, we won’t starve. And if you could wait for the money I know I owe you–––”

“Call it a wedding present,” Mary said, briefly.

“You lamb!”

Trudy fell on her neck and was in the throes of explaining how grateful she was and how she had an evening dress modelled after one of Gay’s sister’s, which cost seven hundred dollars before the war, when Gay appeared––very debonair and optimistic in his checked suit, velours hat, and toothpick-toed tan shoes, and his pale little eyes were quite animated as he kissed Trudy and dutifully shook hands with Mary, explaining that the Hunters of Arcadia had just offered him a clerical position at the club, ordering supplies and making out bills and so on––because he was married, very likely. It would pay forty a month and his lunches.

“And only take up your mornings! You can slip extra sandwiches in your pockets for me, deary. I’ll give you a rubber-pocketed vest for a Christmas present,” Trudy exclaimed. “Oh, say everything in front of Mary––she knows what we really are!”

At which Mary fled, with the general after impression of pale, wicked eyes and a checked suit and a dashing, red-haired young matron with a can opener always on hand, and the fact that the Vondeplosshes 110 were going to lay siege to the O’Valleys as soon as possible.

Mary decided that it was a great privilege to be a profane lady concealing a heartache compared to other alternatives. At least heartaches were quite real.

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CHAPTER VII

It was almost Christmas week before the realization of Trudy’s ambition to have Beatrice call upon her as the wife of Gaylord Vondeplosshe instead of an unimportant employee of her own husband. Trudy counted upon Beatrice to help her far more than Gaylord dared to hope.

“Bea is like all her sort,” he warned Trudy when the point of Beatrice’s having to invite the Vondeplosshes for dinner was close at hand; “she is crazy about herself and her money. She would cheat for ten cents and then turn right round and buy a thousand-dollar dress without questioning the price.”

Which was true. Beatrice had never had to acquire any sense of values regarding either money or character. By turns she was penurious and lavish, suspecting a maid of stealing a sheet of notepaper and then writing a handsome check for a charity in which she had only a passing interest. She would send her soiled finery to relief committees, and when someone told her that satin slippers and torn chiffon frocks were not practical she would say in injured astonishment: “Sell them and use the money. I never have practical clothes.”

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.

“You take too much of that stuff,” Trudy warned, gathering up her débris; “and when you have taken too much you talk too much.”

Gaylord rewarded her by consuming a third glass. “Shall we eat out?”

She shook her head. “Too expensive. There’s no need for it now. I bought some potato salad and I have canned pineapple and sugar cookies.”

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She dumped her work into a basket and flew round the dining room until she summoned Gaylord to join her in a meal laid out on the corner of a dingy luncheon table.

The wine dulled Gay’s appetite and Trudy’s had been taken quite away by Beatrice’s proposed visit. Besides, they put the latest jazz record on their little talking machine, which helped substitute for a decent meal. They danced a little while and then Trudy planned what she should wear for the O’Valley dinner party and Gaylord figured how much money he needed before he would dare try buying an automobile, and they finished the evening by attending the nine-o’clock movie performance and buying fifteen cents’ worth of lemon ice and two sponge cakes to bring home as a pièce de resistance.

Beatrice found herself amused instead of annoyed as she climbed the stairs to the Vondeplosshe residence. At Trudy’s request Gay had discreetly consented to be absent. He had pretty well picked up the threads of his various enterprises and what with his club duties, his second-rate concerts, his gambling, and commissions from antique dealers, he managed to put in what he termed a full day. So he swung out of the house early in the afternoon to buy himself a new winter outfit, wondering if Trudy would row when she discovered the fact.

Gaylord’s theory of married life was “What’s mine is my own, and what’s yours is mine.” He relied on Trudy to mend his clothes and make his neckties, keep house and manage with a laundress a half day a week, yet always be as well dressed and pretty as when she had slacked in the office and 116 boarded without cares at Mary’s house. She must always seem happy and proud of her husband and have her old pep––being on the lookout for a way to make their fortunes. She must also remain as young looking as ever and always be at his beck and call. Gaylord was rapidly developing into an impossible little bully, the usual result of an impoverished snob who manages to become a barnacle-like fixture on someone a trifle more foolish yet better of nature than himself.

Had he been less aristocratic of family and stronger of brawn he would have beaten Trudy if she displeased him. As it was, after the first flush of romance passed, he began to sneer at her in private when she made mistakes in the ways of the smart set into which Gaylord had been born, and when she protested he only sneered the louder. He felt Trudy should be eternally grateful to him. Trudy found herself bewildered, hurt––yet unable to combat his contemptible little laughs and sneers. Trudy was shallow and she knew not the meaning of the word “ideal,” but for the most part she was rather amiable and unless she had a certain goal to attain she wished everyone about her to be happy and content. As she had married Gaylord only as a stepping-stone she was fair enough to remind herself of this fact when unpleasant developments occurred. As long as he was useful to her she was not going to seize upon pin-pricks and try to make them into actual wounds.

She decided to wear her one decent tea gown when Beatrice called, pleading a bad headache as an excuse for its appearance. She knew the tea gown was an excellent French model, a hand-me-down from Gay’s 117 sister, and her nimble fingers had cleaned and mended the trailing pink-silk loveliness until it would make quite a satisfactory first impression.

She cleaned the apartment, recklessly bought cut flowers, bonbons, and two fashion magazines to give an impression of plenty. She even set old golf clubs and motor togs in the tiny hall, and she timed Beatrice’s arrival so as to put the one grand-opera record on the talking machine just as she was coming up the stairs.

Then she ran to the door in pretty confusion, to say spiritedly: “Oh, Mrs. O’Valley, so good of you. I’m ever so happy to have you. I’m afraid it isn’t proper to be wearing this old tea gown but I had a bad headache this morning and I stayed in bed until nearly luncheon, then I slipped into the first thing handy.... Oh, no. Only a nervous headache. We took too long a motor trip yesterday, the sun was so bright.... No, indeed; you do not make my headache worse. It’s better right this minute.... Now please don’t laugh at our little place. Can’t you play you’re a doll and this is the house you were supposed to live in? I do––I find myself laughing every time I really take time to stand back and look at the rooms.... Put your coat here. Such a charming one, the skins are so exquisitely matched. I do so want to talk to you.”

She had such an honest, innocent expression that Beatrice found herself won over to the cause. Trudy understood Beatrice at first sight; she knew how to proceed without blundering.

“Sit here, Mrs. Steve, for I can’t call you Mrs. O’Valley with Gay singing the praises of Bea and Beatrice and the Gorgeous Girl.”

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“Then––er––call me Beatrice,” she found herself saying.

“How wonderful! But only on condition that I am Trudy to you. How pleased Gay is going to be! He adores you. You have no idea of how much he talks about you and approves all you do and say. I used to be a teeny weeny bit jealous of you when I was a poor little nobody.” She passed the chocolates, nodding graciously as Beatrice selected the largest one in the box.

Trudy chattered ahead: “I was glancing through these fashion books this afternoon to get an idea for an afternoon dress. Of course I can’t have wonderful things like you have”––looking with envy at the Gorgeous Girl’s black-velvet costume––“still, I don’t mind. When one is happy mere things do not matter, do they––Beatrice?”

Beatrice hesitated. Then she fortified herself by another bonbon. This strange girl was both interesting and dangerous. Certainly she was not to be snubbed or ridiculed. Vaguely Beatrice tried to analyze her hostess, but as she had never been called upon to judge human nature she was sluggish in even trying to exercise her faculties.

In China fathers have their daughters’ feet bound and make them sleep away from the house so their moans will not disturb the family. In America fathers often repress their daughters’ self-sufficiency and intellect by bonds of self-indulgence, and when the daughters realize that a stockade of dollars is a most flimsy fortress in the world against the experiences which come to every man and woman the American girls are the mental complement of their physically tortured Chinese cousins––hopeless and without redress.

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“You have made this place look well,” Beatrice said, presently, “It is a perfect tinder box. Papa knows the man who built it.”

Trudy flushed. “We are merely trying out love in a cliffette,” she said, sweetly, “instead of the old-style cottage. We can’t expect anything like your apartment. We have that prospect to look forward to. Besides, we have the advantage of knowing just who our real friends are,” she added, smiling her prettiest.

Beatrice disposed of another chocolate. She told herself she was being placed in an awkward position. She had occasion to keep thinking so every moment of her visit, for Trudy hastened to add that she had never liked office work and yet Mr. O’Valley had been so good to her, and wasn’t it splendid that America was a country where one had a chance and could rise to whatsoever place one deserved; and when one thought of Beatrice’s own dear papa and handsome husband, well, it was all quite inspiring and wonderful––until Beatrice was as uncomfortable about Steve’s goat tending and her father’s marital selection of a farmer’s hired girl as Trudy really was of the apartment and her second-hand frock.

Trudy lost no time in introducing the magic vanishing-cream and liquid face power, and before the call ended Beatrice had ordered five dollars’ worth of each and some for Aunt Belle, and she had offered to take Trudy to her bridge club some time soon.

As the door closed Trudy sank back in her chair, informing the imitation fireplace joyously: “It was almost too easy; I didn’t have to work as hard as I really wanted to.” Wearily she dragged off her tea 120 gown for a bungalow apron and then prepared a supper of delicatessen baked beans and instantaneous pudding for her lord and master.

The dinner with the O’Valleys was equally fruitful of results. Despite Steve’s protests that he did not wish to know Gay and that Trudy was impossible he was forced to listen to their inane jokes and absurd flatteries and to look at Trudy in her taupe chiffon with exclamatory strands of burnt ostrich, and watch her deft fashion of handling his wife, realizing that people with one-cylinder brains and smart-looking, redheaded wives usually get by with things!

After their guests had departed Steve began brusquely: “Do you like’em?”

“No; I told you before that they amused me. She is fun, and poor Gay is a dear.”

“Are you going to have them round all the time? That woman’s laugh gets on my nerves, and I want him shot at sunrise. They can’t talk about anything but the movies and jazz dancing and clothes.”

“What do you want them to talk about? Don’t pace up and down like a wild beast.” Beatrice came up and stood before him to prevent his turning the corner.

He looked down at her without answering. She was clad in shimmering white loveliness cut along the same medieval lines as the gown another Beatrice had worn when Dante first saw her walking by the Arno; her hair was very sunshiny and fragrant and her dove-coloured eyes most appealing.

He burst out laughing at his own protest. “Am I a bear? Come and kiss me. If you like them or they amuse you just tote ’em about, darling. Only 121 can’t you manage to do it while I am out of town? They do fleck me on the raw.”

“Hermit––beast,” she dimpled and shook her finger at him.

“I just want you,” he said, simply; “or else people who can do something besides spend money or sponge round for it.”

“Sometimes you frighten me––you sound booky.”

“I’m not; I want real things, Bea. I feel hungry for plain people.”

“You have them all day long in your office and your shops; I should think when you come home you’d welcome a good time.”

“Our definitions differ. Anyhow, I’m not going to find fault with your friends. I’ve nothing against them except that they are time wasters.”

“Trudy boarded at your wonderful Miss Faithful’s house.”

“In spite of Mary’s common sense, and not because of it.”

“You think a great deal of that girl, don’t you?” she asked, patting his sleeve.

“She deserves a great deal of credit; she has worked since she was thirteen, and she is as true-blue as they come.”

“Do you think she will ever marry and leave you?” she asked, laying the sunshiny head on his arm.

“I never want her to; I’d feel like buying off any prospective bridegroom.”

“That’s not fair.” Her hand stole up to pat his cheek. “She has the right to be happy––as we are, Steve!”

He stared at her in all her lovely uselessness. “You funny little wife,” he whispered––“fighting 122 over losing a postage stamp one minute and buying a new motor car the next; going to luncheon with the washed of Hanover and spending the afternoon with Trudy; making fun of Mary Faithful’s shirt waists and then pleading for her woman’s happiness.... Beatrice, you’ve never had half a chance!”

The next afternoon Mary and Luke Faithful were summoned home. Later in the day Steve received word that their mother had succumbed to a violent heart attack. He found himself feeling concerned and truly sorry, wondering if Mary had any one to see to things and relieve her of the responsibility. Then he wondered if this death would cause a dormant affection to become active love as often happens, causing him to lose his right-hand man. He reproached himself for knowing so little of her private life. When he went into her deserted office to find a letter it seemed distinctly lonesome. It was hard to realize how suddenly things happen and how easily the world at large becomes accustomed to radical changes. Already a snub-nosed little clerk was taking up a collection for the flowers.

For the first time in years Steve felt depressed and weary. The anaesthesia was losing its power.

Within the coming week as vital a mental change was to come to Steve as the death of Mrs. Faithful was to cause in Mary’s life. And as Mary, to all purposes, would resume her business routine with not a hint of the change, so would Steve fail to betray the mental revolution that was to take place in his hitherto ambitious and obedient brain.

Briefly what was to happen was this––after visiting Mary in her home and after seeing the Gorgeous Girl 123 during a test of one’s abilities, Steve was to realize that there are two kinds of person in the world: Those who make brittle, detailed plans, and those who have but a steadfast purpose. His wife belonged to the former class and Mary to the latter, which he was to discover was his choice at all times!

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CHAPTER VIII

The day of Mrs. Faithful’s funeral was the day that Beatrice O’Valley had arranged to introduce Trudy Vondeplosshe to her bridge club, the members of which were keen to see Gay’s wife in order to prove whether or not Bea’s report concerning her was correct––that she was a clever young person quite capable of taking care of both her own and Gay’s futures.

Beatrice particularly looked forward to the afternoon. Introducing Trudy served as an attraction, and besides the hostess had telephoned her that she had just received a box of Russian sweetmeats made by a refugee who was starting life anew in New York, and two barrels of china, each barrel containing but three plates and each plate being valued at six hundred dollars. Furthermore, Beatrice was wearing an afternoon costume that would demand no small share of attention, and there was the additional joy of dazzling Trudy by her tapestry-lined winter car. So when Steve reminded her in a matter-of-fact way that the funeral services for Mrs. Faithful were to be at three she stared in amazement.

“My dear boy, I am very sorry your secretary’s muzzy has died––but I cannot change my plans. I accepted for both Trudy Vondeplosshe and myself more than a week ago.”

Steve wondered if he had heard correctly. “You don’t imagine for an instant that Trudy will not 125 go? She boarded there; they did everything for her.”

Beatrice shrugged her shoulders. “She was phoning me before lunch and is all agog with excitement. Poor little thing, it means a lot for her. She will be ready at three and I am to call for her.”

“I don’t think she understands the funeral is to-day. I know she is heartless and shallow, but even she would scarcely omit such a duty.”

Beatrice gave a long sigh. “Dear me, you ought to have been an evangelist. I can’t understand why you suddenly become punctilious and altruistic. For years you never did anything but try to make money and wonder if I would marry you––you never cared who was dead or what happened as long as you were secure.”

“Quite true. But I have made a fortune and married you, and it is time for other things.”

“You are welcome to them,” she said, quite enjoying the argument. “Besides, I sent my card with the flowers.”

“It isn’t the same as going yourself, it is your duty to go, Bea. The girl has taken the brunt of business while we played and she has only the reward of a salary. Her mother has died, which means that her home is gone. I call it thick to choose a bridge party instead of paying a humane debt.”

“Why am I dragged into it? She isn’t working for me! Papa never asked me to go when any of his people had relatives who died. I don’t think he ever went himself unless there was a claim to be adjusted.”

“I shouldn’t ask it if it were any one else––but Mary Faithful is different.”

“You are quite ardent in your defence of her. Be 126 sensible, Steve. What does it matter whether I go or don’t go? I think it quite enough if you appear. Now if she were in need of actual money–––”

“Oh, certainly!” he said, bitterly. “That would give you the chance to play off Lady Bountiful, drive up in state with your check book and accept figurative kisses on the hand! But when a plain American business girl who has served me more loyally than she has herself loses her mother you won’t be a few moments late at a bridge party in order to pay her the respect employers should pay their employees. I don’t blame Trudy––I expect nothing of her––but I do blame you.”

“So my plans are to be set aside–––?”

“Plans!” he interrupted. “If someone else were to tell you that they had an East Indian yogi who was going to give a seance this very afternoon you would hotfoot it to the telephone to inform Trudy that you must break your engagement with her, and send word to your original hostess as well. That is about all your plans amount to.”

Beatrice’s eyes had grown slanting, shining with rage. “I wish you would remember you are speaking to your wife and not to an employee. I would not go to that funeral now if it meant––if it meant a divorce.” She pushed her chair back from the table––they were at luncheon––and stood up indignantly.

Looking at her in her gay light chiffon with its traceries of gold Steve wondered vaguely whether or not he had been wrong in selecting his goal, whether he would ever be able really to understand this Gorgeous Girl now that she belonged to him, or would discover that there was nothing much to understand 127 about her, that it could all be summed up in the statement that her father by denying her a chance at development had stunted the growth of her ability and her character into raggle-taggle weeds of self-indulgence and willful temper.

“I shall not ask you to go with me,” he knew he answered. It is quite as terrifying to find that one’s goal has been wrongly chosen and ethically unsound as to find a boyhood dream merging into gorgeous reality.

Beatrice swept out of the room. Steve made an elaborate pretense of finishing his meal. Then he went into the drawing room in search of a newspaper. He came upon Beatrice sitting on a floor cushion, feeding Monster some bonbons.

“Have you been at her house?” she said, curiosity overcoming the pique.

“Yes. Where is that paper? I dropped it in this chair when I came in for luncheon.”

“I had it taken away. I abominate newspapers in a drawing room––or muddy shoes,” she added, looking at his own. “What did she say? What sort of a house is it?”

Steve stared at her in bewilderment. “What the devil difference does it make to you?” he demanded, roughly.

She gave a little scream. “Don’t you dare say such things to me.” Then she began to cry very prettily in a singsong, high-pitched voice. “Monster––nobody loves us––nobody loves us––we can’t have a merry Christmas after all.”

“I shan’t be home for dinner,” Steve added more politely. “Miss Faithful’s absence just now makes things quite rushed––I’ll work until late.”

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Beatrice sprang up, letting Monster scramble unheeded to the floor. “Oh, you are trying to punish me!”––pretending mock horror. “Stevuns dear, don’t mind my not going! Plans are plans, you must learn to understand. And I’ll send her a lovely black waist and a plum pudding for her Christmas. Tell her I was laid up with one of my bad heads.... No? You won’t let me fib? Horrid old thing––come and kiss me!... Ah, you never refuse to kiss me, nice cave man with bad manners and muddy shoes, wanting to thump his strong dear fists on my little Chippendale tables––and grow so good and booky all in an instant. Forgets he was ever a bad pirate and robbed everyone until he could buy his Gorgeous Girl. Good-bye, story-book man, don’t let the old funeral frazzle you!”

Steve left the house, undecided whether he was taking things too seriously and ought to apologize for being rude to Beatrice or whether his intuitive impression was correct––that Beatrice was not the sort of person he had imagined but that he, per se, was to blame in the matter.

Steve chose to take a street car to the Faithful house. He shrank from creating the atmosphere of a generous and overbearing magnate whose chauffeur opened the door of his machine and waited for him to step majestically upon terra firma. He felt merely a sympathetic friend, for some reason, as he walked the three blocks from the street car through slush and ice, and realized that Mary Faithful trudged back and forth this same pathway twice a day.

Unexpectedly he met Mary at the door, rather white faced and grayer of eyes than usual, but the same sensible Mary who did not believe in any of the 129 customary agonies of grieving proper, as she afterward told him. The old house had not assumed a funereal air. There were flowers on the tables and the cheery fire crackled in the grate, and even the face of the dead woman seemed more content and optimistic than it had ever been in life.

Steve was not expected to go to the cemetery so he trudged back through the same slush to the street car. A fish-market doorway proved a haven during a long wait. He lounged idly against the doorway as if he were an unemployed person casting about for new fields of endeavour instead of the rushed young Midas whose office phone was ringing incessantly.

He was thinking about Mary Faithful’s pleasant manner, the atmosphere of the old-fashioned house, where there was no effort to be smart or gorgeous or to conceal its shabbiness. He hoped Mary would return to the office within the next few days. He wanted her more than he wanted any one else, but he told himself this was because he was selfish and she was a capable machine. No, that was not it, he decided a moment later as he looked in at the activities of the fish market with passing interest.

Mary no longer seemed a mere machine but a remarkable woman, a womanly woman, too. He liked the old house with its atrocious horsehair sofa and chair tidies and the Rogers group in the front bay window. The fire had been so elemental and soothing, so were the pots of flowers, the shabby piano, and even more shabby books. One could rest there, distributing whole flocks of newspapers where he would. The death awe had not been permitted to take a paramount place. How lucky Luke was, to have such a sister.

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Mary was about Beatrice’s age. At thirteen she had begun to earn her own living. At thirteen Beatrice had had a pony cart, a governess, a multitude of frocks, her midwinter trip to New York, where she saw all the musical comedies and gorged on chocolates and pastry.

The upshot of it was that Steve decided to call on Mary the following afternoon; it was only courtesy he told himself by way of an excuse. He wanted to talk to her––not of business but of life, of the shabby old house. Outwardly he wanted to ask if he might help her and what her plans were, but in reality he wanted her to help him. He no longer felt displeased that Beatrice had not come with him; he felt positive Mary would understand, that she would dismiss Trudy’s slight with proper scorn. Beatrice would have insisted upon arriving in state. By this time the bridge club with its Russian sweetmeats, its six-hundred-dollar china plates, the new afternoon frock, and the spoofing of Trudy must be well under way!

The fish market was not doing a land-office business. Stray purchasers approached and halted before the cashier’s cage. Steve began watching them. Suddenly he became aware of the gorgeous young woman presiding behind the wire cage, reluctantly pushing out change and accepting slips, completely preoccupied in her own thoughts, while a copy of the High Blood Pressure Weekly lay at one side. What attracted Steve was the horrible similarity between this young person and his own wife! Both had the same fluffed, frizzled hair and a gay light chiffon frock with gold trimmings. Though it was December the toothpick point of a white-kid slipper protruded from the cage. An imitation Egyptian 131 necklace called attention to the thin, powdered throat. The cashier was altogether a cheap copy of Beatrice’s general appearance. She had the same tiny, nondescript features and indolent expression in her eyes; she was most superior in her fashion of dealing with the customers, never deigning to speak or be spoken to. As soon as she spied Steve, however, she smiled an invitation to enter and become owner of half a whitefish or so.

Then the car came and he leaped aboard. It seemed unbearable that a counterpart of Beatrice O’Valley was making change at Sullivan’s Fish Market––but more unbearable to realize that women in the position of Beatrice O’Valley dressed and rouged––and acted very often––in such a fashion that women in the position of Trudy and this cashier queen sought industriously to imitate them.

Luke showed his grief in the normal manner of any half-grown, true-blue lad, singularly thoughtful of his sister’s wishes, and mentioning everyone and everything except their mother and her death.

“We won’t give up having a home,” Mary told him the night of the funeral; “we’ll move into a smaller place so I can take care of it.”

“I guess I’ll work pretty hard at school,” was all he answered.

“Of course you will. I’m proud of you now, and if you work and show you deserve it I’ll help you through college.”

Luke shook his head. “Takes too long before I could get to earning real money. You ought to have it easy pretty soon.”

“I love my work. Besides, you will live your own 132 life, and so you must grow up and love someone and marry her. I can’t depend on any one but myself,” she added, a little bitterly.

Luke stared into the fire. Perhaps this tousle-haired, freckle-faced boy surmised his sister’s love-story. If so no one––least of all his sister––should ever hear of the facts from his lips.

“I’m never going to get married. I want to make a lot of money like Mr. O’Valley did––quick. Then we’ll go and live in Europe and maybe I’ll get a steam yacht and we’ll hunt for buried treasure,” he could not refrain from adding.

“All right, dear. Just work hard for now and be my pal; we’ll let the future take care of itself. Another thing––we want to have as merry a Christmas as if mother were with us. It’s the only thing to do or else we’ll find ourselves morbid and unable to keep going.”

Shamed tears were stoically refused entrance into Luke’s blue eyes. “I guess I’ll buy you a silver-backed comb and brush. I got some extra money.”

“Oh, Luke––dear!” Mary made the fatal error of trying to hug him. He wriggled away.

“Trudy never came near us,” he said, sternly.

Mary was silent.

“But Mr. O’Valley came like a regular–––”

“Don’t you think you ought to get to bed?” Mary changed the subject. “Sleep in the room next to mine if you like.”

“When are you coming upstairs?”

“Soon. I want to look over the letters.”

Luke rose and pretended a nonchalant stretching.

“Are you going to the office right away?”

“Not until New Year’s.”

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Something in the tired way she spoke evoked Luke’s pity and sent him away to smother his boy-man’s grief by promises of a glorious future in which his sister should live in the lap of luxury.

With its customary shock death had for the time being given Mary a false estimate of her mother and herself, the usual neurasthenic experience people undergo at such a time. It seemed, as she sat alone by the fire, that she must have been a strangely selfish and ungrateful child who misunderstood, neglected, and underestimated her mother, and she would be forced to live with reproachful memories the rest of her days. Each difference of opinion––and there had been little else––which had risen between them was magnified into brutal injustice on Mary’s part and righteous indignation on her mother’s. This state of mind would find a proper readjustment in time but that did not comfort Mary at the present moment. Her mother was dead, and when a mother is gone so is the home unless someone bravely slips into the absent one’s place without delay and assumes its responsibilities and credits. For Luke’s sake this was what Mary had resolved to do.

As she could not sleep she rummaged in a cabinet containing old letters and mementos, which added fuel to her self-reproach and misery. She had borne up until now. Mary had always been the sort who could meet a crisis. Reaction had set in and she felt weak and faulty, longing for a strong shoulder upon which to cry and be forgiven for her imagined shortcomings. As she read yellowed letters of bygone days and lives, finding the record of a baby sister who had lived only a few days and of whom she had been in ignorance, a scrap of her mother’s wedding 134 gown, old tintypes––she realized that her family was no more and that everyone needed a family, a group of related persons whose interests, arguments, events, and achievements are of particular benefit and importance each to the other and who unconsciously challenge the world, no matter what secret disagreements there may be, to disrupt them if they dare! Now only Luke and Mary comprised the family.

After midnight Mary battled herself into the commonsense attitude of going to bed. Wakening after the dreamless sleep of the exhausted she found low spirits and self-blame had somewhat diminished and though her state of mind was as serious as her gray eyes yet life was not utterly bereft of compensations.

Luke had thoughtfully risen early, clumsily tiptoeing about to get breakfast. Neighbours had furnished the customary donations of cake, pie, and doughnuts, which gave Luke the opportunity of spreading the breakfast table with these kingly viands and doing justice to them in no half-hearted fashion.

The sun streamed through the starched window curtains, and even the empty rocking-chair seemed serene in the relief from its morbid burden. Christmas was only a few days away. Mary decided that they should have a truly Christmas dinner, and that the words she had bravely spoken as a three-year-old runaway, found a mile from home and offered assistance by kindly strangers, should become quite true: “Not anybody need take care of myself,” Mary had declared in dauntless fashion.

Later in the day Luke went to the office because Mary thought it best. So when Steve called he 135 found her alone, the same cheery fire burning in the grate, the same posies blooming in their window pots, and the smell of homemade bread pervading the house, Mary in a soft gray frock presiding over the walnut secretary.

“I’m sorry not to be at the office,” she began, thinking he had come to persuade her to return. “Sit down. Well––you see,” indicating the stacks of addressed envelopes––“I really can’t come back until after the New Year. Do you mind? There is a great deal to be seen to here, and I feel I’ve earned the right to loaf for a week. I want particularly to make the holidays happy for Luke.”

“Of course you do. Besides, you never had your vacation.”

“We’ll call this a vacation and I’ll work extra hard to prove to you that it was worth the granting.” Still she did not understand that he wanted to talk to her for the very comfort of her companionship, to enjoy the fire, the smell of homemade bread, the atmosphere of shabby, lovely, everyday plain living.

“We’ll decide that later. I came to see just––you. Surprised? I wanted to ask if there is anything I can do for you. I want to help if I may.”

“I’ve no exact plans. Just a definite idea of finding a small apartment and making it as homey as possible. I loathe apartments usually,” she added, impulsively, “but we must have a home and I can’t assume a whole house. We will take our old things and fix them over, and the worst of them we’ll pass on to someone needing them badly enough not to mind what they are.” She was quite frank in admitting the tortured walnut and the engravings.

“I’m glad you are not going to break up and 136 board––though it’s none of my business. I brought some fruit. Do you mind?” He had been trying to hide behind the chair a mammoth basket of fruit.

“No. How lovely of you and Mrs. O’Valley!”

“It was not possible for Mrs. O’Valley to come yesterday,” he forced himself to say. “She was very sorry and is going to call on you later.”

“Thank you,” Mary answered, briefly.

“You have a nice old place here. Mind if I stroll about and stare? I have very seldom been in rooms like this one. An orphan asylum, a ranch, a hall bedroom, star boarder, a club, a better club, the young palace––is my record. How different you seem in your home, Miss Faithful. Perhaps it’s the dress. I like soft gray–––” he caught himself in time.

Mary was blushing. She called his attention to some wood carving her father had done. Presently Steve changed the subject back to himself.

“You don’t know how I’d like a slice of homemade bread,” he pleaded. “Must I turn up my coat collar and go stand at the side door?”

“I made it because Luke had eaten nothing but pie and cake. You really don’t want just bread?”

“I do––two slices, thick, stepmother size, please.”

It seemed quite unreal to Mary as she was finally prevailed upon to bring in the tea wagon with the bread and jam trimmings to accompany the steaming little kettle.

“Man alive,” sighed Steve, stretching out leisurely, “I came to console you and I’m being consoled and fed––in body and mind––made fit for work.... I say, what do you think of letting the Boston merger be made public at the banquet 137 on–––” He began a budget of business detail upon which Mary commented, agreeing or objecting as she felt inclined.

It was so easy to become clear-headed about work––details became adjusted with magical speed––when one had a gray-eyed girl with a tilted freckled nose sitting opposite. The soft gray dress played a prominent part, too, even if the Gorgeous Girl would have been amused at its style and material. Besides this, there was the wood fire, the easy-chair with gay Turkey-red cushions designed for use and not admiration, and no yapping spaniel getting tangled up in one’s heels.

Before they realized it twilight arrived, and simultaneously they began to be self-conscious and formal, telling themselves that this would never do, no, indeed! Dear me, what queer things do happen all in a day! Still, it would always be a splendid thing to remember.

Certainly it was more edifying than to confront a nervous Gorgeous Girl who had discovered that her maid had been reading her personal notes.

“I sprinkled talcum powder on them and the powder is all smudged away, so Jody has been spying. She is packing her things now and I shall refuse any references. But who will ever take such good care of me, Steve? And please get dressed; we are invited to the Marcus Baynes for dinner. They have a wonderful poet from Greenwich Village who is spending the holidays with them––long hair, green-velvet jacket, cigar-box ukulele, and all. A darling! And I am going to take Monster because he does black-and-white sketches and I want one of my ittey, bittey dirl.” And so on.

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Certainly it was more pleasing than to have a shamed and confused Trudy elegantly attired come dashing in with a jar of vanishing cream as a peace offering, presumably to smooth out any wrinkles of grief, and to explain hastily that it looked like a lack of feeling not to be at the funeral but most certainly it was not––no, indeed; it was just tending to business. She was sure Mary realized how essential it was not to offend the Gorgeous Girl. How dreadful it was for poor Mary. She, Trudy, had cried her old eyes out thinking about it. Did Mary get the flowers she and Gay sent? She wished she could do something nice for Mary. How would she like to have a black-satin dress made at cost price? No? She wasn’t going to wear mourning! Well, it was very brave but it would certainly look queer and cause talk.... Gay’s moustache was coming on beautifully and no one at the bridge club had dared to spoof her!

At least there was some excuse for the delivery on Christmas Day of a parcel addressed to Miss Mary Faithful. It contained Steve’s card, some wonderful new books with an ivory paper knife slipped between them. And when Mary wrote to thank him she found herself inclosing a demure new silver dime, explaining:

“I must give you a coin because you gave me a knife, and unless I did so the old superstition might come true––and cut our ‘business affections’ right straight in two!”

139

CHAPTER IX

Mary returned to the office with a premeditatedly formal air toward Steve. She had taken a New Year’s resolution to refrain from letting an impulsive expression of sympathy assume false meanings in her heart. On the other hand, Steve felt a boor for having sent the books. He was so used to being called cave man and told not to do this or say that that he now pictured himself an awkward villain who had best confine himself to writing checks and growling at the business world.

He almost dreaded seeing Mary lest she show she considered the gift improper despite her delightful little note of thanks. This demeanour, however, was of short duration. They became their real selves before the morning passed, the medium being the question of keeping John Gager, an old clerk pressed into service during the war period and now superfluous.

“Are you going to let him go?” Mary reproached Steve.

“I think so; he’s a doddering nuisance they tell me.”

“But he’s old and he has always served so faithfully. I don’t think it’s right to send him away now. He does do what is expected of him.”

Mary’s vacation had somewhat dimmed her business sagacity.

“I suppose; but we’ll be doddering idiots some day, 140 too. No one will keep us. No one can expect to be carried along indefinitely.”

“It’s the first time I have ever asked you to do such a thing,” she insisted, fearlessly. “To see him trying to act as fit as twenty-five, wearing juvenile shirts and ties, struggling to be brisk, slangy, to oblige everyone and step along, you know. Oh, don’t turn him away just yet; he is honest and he tries. I can’t tell him, and can’t you see his old face quiver when he opens his envelope and finds the dismissal slip?”

Steve’s resolutions faded like mist before the sun. He found himself saying: “You ought to be a little sister to the poor. I guess we’ll keep Gager for a while. He doesn’t smoke cigarettes all day and try to lie about it. How did you like those books?” he added, boyishly.

Mary laid a finger on her lips. “Sh-h-h. It’s business. But I did like them––so would you.”

“I’d read them if I had an easy-chair and some homemade bread and tea. Do you know what I had to do for my Christmas Day?”

“Please––I’d rather not–––”

“I must tell someone, and ask if I’m all wrong about it,” he said, half humorously, half in earnest. “I told my father-in-law in part and it struck him as a huge joke. He purpled with laughing and said: ‘Gad, she’ll always have her way!’” Steve was thinking out loud. He was realizing that Constantine was not even conscious he had raised his daughter to be a rebel doll and he, apparently an honourable citizen, encouraged and upheld her in her doctrine.

“Well, what did you have to do?” Mary asked in spite of herself.

141

“I had to officiate at Monster’s Christmas tree, which was in the boudoir, laden with the treasures of the four corners. I presented a diamond-studded gold purse and a sable cape to my wife and received a diamond-studded cigar knife––I have two others––and a mink-lined coat in return. I was dragged to a half-dozen different houses to deliver presents and collect the same, and witness the tragedy of Bea’s receiving a vanity case she had given someone else two years before and which had evidently been going the rounds. It was a bit disconcerting to have it turn up.

“I had a ponderous seven-course dinner at Mr. Constantine’s, during which I had to kiss Aunt Belle under the mistletoe and pretend to be elated, hear several yards of grand opera torn off on the new talking machine in its nine-hundred-dollar Chinese case, take my father-in-law to the club, return to find Trudy and Gay having a Yuletide word with my wife. Trudy brought a concoction of purple chiffon, jet beads, and exploded hen which was entitled a breakfast jacket, and in return she drew down a pair of silver candlesticks.

“After that we dressed in all our grandeur for the fancy-dress ball at Colonel Tatlock’s, Beatrice as Juliet and I as the young and dashing Romeo! Shivering in our finery we drove to the Tatlock’s to make fools of ourselves until three A. M. and shiver home again with aching heads and a handful of damaged cotillion favours. About the same sort of thing happened on New Year’s.” He laughed, but it was not a pleasant sound, inviting a response.

Beatrice dashed in, to Mary’s relief, to bestow––over 142 a week late––a Christmas present of perfume and a black-silk waist.

“Mr. O’Valley has explained how rushed I have been with my classes,” she began, prettily, “but I have thought of you in all your sorrow. I lost my dear mother when I was too young to remember her, still it means a bond between us.... Oh, you are not wearing black? Dear me, that’s too bad.... Well, you may have to go to somebody’s funeral where you feel you want to wear it––a black waist is always useful.”

She managed to carry Steve off to look at a set of pink glass sherbet cups she was to give her father for his birthday, and Mary was conscious of a certain pity for the Gorgeous Girl––prompted not so much by her present state of affairs as her inevitable future.

The last of January Steve was called away on a business trip through the Middle West. Beatrice had no desire to go with him; she said she simply could not conceive of having a good time in Indiana and Illinois, and what was the sense in bearing with him in his misery? But she was quite willing Steve should stay away as long as he was needed by business entanglements. In fact, Beatrice now betrayed a certain driving quality in trying to make him feel that as their honeymoon was ended and everyone had entertained for them it was high time Steve must retire from social life to a degree, and outdo her own father in the making of a vast fortune. She seldom begged him to ride with her or come home to luncheon to fritter away the best part of the afternoon in a pursuit of silver-pheasant ornaments for the dinner table. That phase of her selfishness was at an end. It was when Steve demanded the luxury of merely 143 staying at home with no chattering peacocks of women and asinine, half-tipsy men playing with each other until early morning that Beatrice refused her consent.

She did not wish any personal domestic life, Steve decided after several experiences along these lines. She could not see the pleasure in a Sunday afternoon hike; walking to see a sunset was absurd! All very well to be whisked by at twenty miles an hour and give a careless nod at the setting golden sphere, but to trudge through wintry roads and up an icy hill and stand, frozen and fagged, weighted down by sweaters, to–––Dear me, Steve really needed to see a doctor! Perhaps he had better start to play golf with papa!

Meals tête-à-tête caused her spirits to droop, and she soon fell into the habit of waiting until Steve was away or having her luncheon in her room. She was seldom up for breakfast, and when he protested against this hotel-like custom she would say: “I don’t expect you to appreciate my viewpoint and my wishes, but at least be well-bred enough to tolerate them!”

He was on the point of reminding her that his viewpoint and wishes were treated only with argument and ridicule––but as usual he refrained. Silence on the part of one who knows he is in the right yet chooses apparently to yield the point in question is a significant milestone on the road of separation. An argument with Beatrice meant one of two outcomes: A violent scene of temper and overwrought nerves with tears as the conquering slacker’s weapon or a long, sulky period of tenseness which made him take refuge in his office and his club.

He wondered sometimes how it was he had never 144 before realized the true worth of his wife, how he had been so madly infatuated and adoring of her slightest whim during the years of earning his fortune and the brief period of their formal engagement. Almost reluctantly the anæsthesia of unreality and distorted values was disappearing, leaving Steve with but one conclusion: That it had been his own conceited fault, and therefore he deserved scant pity from either himself or the world at large.

Mark Constantine, whose activities lessened each month, due to ill health, began prowling about Steve’s office at unexpected hours, cornering him for prosy talks and conferences, under which Steve writhed in helpless surrender. Since he realized the true meaning of his marriage he began placing the blame on the culprit––Beatrice’s father. As he did so he wondered if it was possible that Constantine did not realize the havoc he had wrought. His wealth and Steve’s speedily accumulated fortune via hides and government razors suddenly seemed stupid, inane; and he no longer felt a sense of pride at what he had accomplished. He never wanted to hear details of Constantine’s more gradual and bitter rise in the world; there was certain to be slimy spots of which Steve in his new frame of mind could no longer approve. He was weary of hearing about money, just as his good sense caused him to be weary of socialistic prattling and absurd pleas for Bolshevism. It seemed to him that the dollar standard was the paramount means both magnate and socialist used to value inanimate and animate objects. He longed for a new unit of measure.

He was keen on business trips. At least he could have the freedom of his hotel and could roam about 145 without being pointed out as the Gorgeous Girl’s husband, the lucky young dog and so on. Neither would he be dragged from this house to that to sit on impossible futurist chairs while young things of thirty-nine clad in belladonna plasters and jet sequins gathered about to tell him what perfectly wonderful times their class in cosmic consciousness was having.

Mary Faithful was keen to have him go. She dreaded any furthering of the personal understanding between them. When one has become master of a heartache and thoroughly demonstrated that mastery it is not sensible to let it verge toward a heart throb, even if one is positive of the ability to change it back at will into the hopeless ache. It is like unhandcuffing a prisoner and saying: “Sprint a bit, I can catch up to you.”

On the other hand, Beatrice had any number of activities to take up her time. Her period of being a romantic parasite––the world called it a sweet bride––was ended. She was now bent on becoming as mad and ruthless a butterfly as there ever was, and to the accomplishment of her aim she did not purpose to stint herself in any way. She still drew her own allowance from her father and accepted extra checks for extra things necessary for her welfare and popularity.

More than once Steve counted the monthly expenditures, with the same result––Beatrice was living on her father’s income quite as much as on his own. Her position was not unlike that of people who say to their prosperous neighbours possessing a motor car: “We’ll furnish the lunch and the gasolene, and you take us to the picnic grounds!” Constantine still owned the figurative motor car, or the substantial 146 end of Beatrice’s expenses, while Steve furnished the lunch and the gasolene, trying to delude himself that he was supporting his wife. Beatrice’s clothes were beyond his income, for he was not yet a millionaire. Neither could he afford the affairs which she gave, with favours of jewellery; nor the trips here and there in private cars.

Furnishing the lunch and gasolene and perhaps a possible tire or so does not give one the sense of ownership that having the motor car gives; nor was it Steve’s notion of being the possessor of a home. He spoke to Beatrice about it, only to be kissed affectionately and scolded prettily by way of answer; or else to have those eternal omnipresent tears reproach him for being cross “when papa wants me to have things and he has no one else in the world to spend all his money on.”

After a few attempts he gave it up but resolved to make his fortune equal to his father-in-law’s, as Beatrice wished. He saw no other way out of the situation. To do so in his present interests was impossible––he had fancied that half a million was a fair sum to offer a Gorgeous Girl––but he saw it was only a nibble at the line. He must outdo Constantine. He cast about for some unsuspected fields of effort, this time to strike out into work of which Constantine was ignorant. He began to resent the fact that after his lucky strike on the exchange he had played copy cat and gone mincing into the hide-and-leather business, using Constantine’s good will as his stepping stone. The same was true of the stock bought in the razor factory; he had merely paid for the stock; he did not know the steps of progress necessary to the business.

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This time he would prove his own merit, he would not take Constantine into his confidence. Unknown to any one save Mary, Steve selected a new-style talking machine to promote. He knew as much about talking machines as Beatrice knew about cooking a square meal. But Steve had lost his clear-headedness and he thought, as do most get-rich-quick men, that, possessed of the Midas touch, he could come in contact with nothing but gold.

He began backing the inventor and looking round for a factory site. He sought it away from Hanover, for he wanted it to be a complete surprise. He begrudged his father-in-law’s knowing anything of it. He went into the enterprise rather heavily––but it did not worry him, for he was quite sure he possessed the luck eternal, and he must support his own wife. Side speculating was the only way he thought it possible to do so.

Meanwhile, Beatrice found Trudy to be both a good foil and a dangerous enemy, one who was not to be ridiculed or set aside. Trudy had never stopped working since the day Beatrice climbed the rear stairs of the Graystone and had been bullied into buying the vanishing cream. Beatrice scarcely knew the various steps which Trudy had climbed in a figurative sense, dragging Gay after her, grumbling and sneering but quite willing to be dragged.

“You see, aunty,” she explained one stormy February afternoon while they were having a permanent wave put in their hair, “Trudy is so obliging and useful, and I’m sorry for her. She tries to do so many nice things for me that I never have a chance to become offended. I’ve tried! But she just won’t break away. And I like to tease Steve by knowing 148 her, Steve is such a bear when he doesn’t like people. Rude is a mild term. He particularly hates Gay. Now Gay is quite a dear and he always played nicely with me. I should hate to lose him––so how can I offend his wife; particularly when she takes so well with older men?”

Aunt Belle sniffed. “Men old enough to be her father––you’d think they would appreciate mellowed love instead of a selfish little chicken.”

The beauty doctor, who had spent the greater share of the day at the Constantine house, suppressed a smile and stored up the remark for her next customer.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Beatrice murmured as she consulted a hand glass. “I am beginning to wish I had married a man about papa’s age. It would have been much jollier in some ways. Steve is so strenuous and rude. A cave man is fun to be engaged to and keep a record about in your chapbook––but when you marry him it is a different matter. I remember how thrilled and enthusiastic about Steve I used to be when he was working for papa and living in a hall bedroom. I knew he adored me yet had to keep his place, and I used to dream about him and wonder if he really would keep his word and make a fortune so he could marry me. But now he has done it–––” She shrugged her shoulders.

“I wouldn’t be too disappointed. Elderly men usually have wheel chairs and diets after a little, and you’d feel it your duty to play nurse.”

“Oh, it’s far better to be disappointed in one’s husband than one’s friends,” Beatrice agreed. “I know that. For you can manage to see very little 149 of your husband; but your friends––deary me, they your very existence.”

“Does Trudy ever mention the days she worked in Steve’s office?”

“Yes. Clever little thing, she knows enough to admit it prettily every now and then, so there is nothing to badger her about. She has even trained Gay to talk of it occasionally. She has done wonders for him; one of the clubmen is backing him to go into the interior-decorating business. Of course he will make good because everyone will feel morally obliged to go there. So the Vondeplosshes on the strength of this have moved to the Touraine, a different sort of apartment house, I assure you. They are entertaining, if you please; everyone asks them everywhere. Gay is painting garlands of old-fashioned flowers in panels for Jill’s boudoir. I think I’ll have the same thing done in mine.”

“Gay is painting them?”

“Oh, no. Some limp artist who could never get the commission for himself. Gay stands about in a natty blue-serge effect and takes the credit and the check. What’s new?”––turning to the beauty doctor. “I’m as dull as the Dead Sea.”

Miss Flinks informed them of a labour revolt in the West.

“Horrid creatures, always wanting more! Well, they won’t get it. I think Steve is ridiculous with his banquets and bonuses and all, and upon my word, Mary Faithful has as good an Oriental rug in her office as I have in my house. Tell us something really important, Miss Flinks.”

Retrieving her error the beauty doctor whispered a scandal concerning the newly married Teddy Markhams, 150 who had had such a violent quarrel the week before that Mrs. Teddy had pushed the piano halfway out the window and police had rushed to the scene thinking it might be another bomb explosion.

“How ripping!”

Beatrice was all animation, and she gave Miss Flinks no peace until she learned all the details, and the rumour about the actress who had rented an expensive town house for the season and a débutante who was being rushed to a retreat to prevent her marriage to a gypsy violinist who had already taught her the drug habit.

Trudy telephoned the latter part of the afternoon, and as it was a gray, blowy day with nothing special to do to revive one’s spirits Beatrice urged her to come in for tea––tea to be cocktails and buttered toast.

Within a few moments she appeared––a symphony of blonde broadcloth set in black furs, very charming and chic, and so solicitous about Aunt Belle’s recently removed mole and the scar left by the electric needle, and so admiring of the two newly beautified ladies that they were quite won in spite of themselves.

“Were you near here when you telephoned?” Beatrice asked, curiously. “You weren’t ten minutes getting here and you look as spick and span as if you had stepped out of a bandbox.”

“Look outside and you’ll see that Gay and I have had a true case of auto-intoxication!”

Outside the window there proved to be a smart, selfish roadster, battleship-gray with vivid scarlet trimmings.

“Well!” Beatrice said in astonishment. At this identical moment she began to envy Trudy. She was 151 really ashamed of the fact, nor did she understand why she should envy this bankrupt yet progressive little nobody in her homemade bargain-remnant costume. The reason was that Beatrice’s latent abilities longed to be doing something, achieving something, capturing, inventing, destroying, earning if need be––but doing something. The daughter of Mark and Hannah Constantine could not help but have the germ of great ability within her, sluggish and spoiled as it might be; and it must perforce duly manifest itself from time to time. Beatrice realized that Trudy felt a greater joy and satisfaction in displaying this not-paid-for cheap machine––having sat up half the night to make the shirred curtains––than Beatrice ever could feel in her tapestry-lined, orchid-adorned limousine. So she began to envy Trudy just as Trudy envied her. Trudy had done nothing but struggle to be able to live, as she termed it; Beatrice had never been allowed to struggle!

“We owe for all but the left back tire,” Trudy said before any one had the chance to hint of the fact; “but Gay has to have it for his new business, and it is such a joy! I hope you approve, Beatrice. And what a darling gown!”

There was nothing left for Beatrice but to order the cocktails and toast, and for Aunt Belle to agree smilingly with Trudy’s clever suggestions.

Trudy never came to see Beatrice unless she gained some material point or had one in view, and the point she had come to gain this afternoon was of no small importance. In her own fashion she managed to inform her hostess that Gay had received an order from––well, it was a tremendous secret and he would be terribly cross if he knew she told even her dearest 152 Bea and her sweet Aunt Belle, but she just couldn’t help it––he had an order from Alice Twill, who thought she was going to beat everyone in town to the greatest sensation of the year: To have the barn of a Twill mansion remodelled, decorated and so on, from coal bin to cupola, until it was an exact copy of a French palace––she really forgot just which one. ... Yes, Alice’s aunt in Australia had died and left her everything; Alice said she was not going to wait until she was on crutches before she spent it. Gay was simply out of his head trying to plan the thing and Alice was to move to a hotel for several weeks until a newly furnished wing was ready to be inhabited.

There was no reason why New York persons should have their homes like palaces and châteaux and so on, and turn their noses up at upstate residences. Alice was going to show them. And––this very subtly––Gay had said that if only Beatrice could have the authority to redecorate her father’s home into an Italian villa Alice Twill would be the loser when comparisons were made––since the Constantine house had twice the possibilities and so on, and Beatrice twice the taste. And what an achievement it would be; a distinct civic improvement!... Yes, Gay was working with the best firms in New York, and there was no doubt of his success in the enterprise.

Before she left, Trudy had almost secured Beatrice’s promise that the Constantine house should be made into an Italian villa and that, if she so decided, Gay should have the commission. There was a place at Frascati she had always admired, and they could use some ideas from a show place in Florida.

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Had Trafalgar terminated differently Napoleon would have been no more surprised or jubilant than Trudy, who fairly skidded home to the new and more pretentious apartment, where she found Gay in one of his sneering, sulky moods and quite angry to think Trudy was carrying the day.

“How do I know Alice Twill will really come across?” he began. “And I suppose you’ve got the machine covered with mud, too. Anyway, what do I know about decorating? I work on my reputation and everyone’s sympathies and I’m in fear all the time some real decorator will turn up and show my hand or else refuse to work under me and split commissions. You’re too damned optimistic.”

“If I wasn’t optimistic where would we be? Starving,” she said with no attempt at politeness. Common courtesies between them had long since been dispensed with. “I’ve gotten you nearly everything you have, and if you’ll do as I say I’ll go right on getting things for you. But you’re lazy and jealous––that’s what’s the matter.”

He gave a sneering little laugh. “Why, you poor nobody, people only tolerate you because of me. They roar behind your back.”

“Do they? They pity me because I’m married to such a weak fish! Men are nice to you because of me––and there isn’t a woman I’ve met that I have not made afraid of me. Beatrice hasn’t the will power of a slug; you can hand her flattery in chunks as big as boulders and she swallows them without choking. It’s her husband who sees through us.”

“What––the goat tender? Oh, beg pardon––treading on someone else’s toes. Or didn’t they have goats in Michigan?”

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“We’ll never hang together another year,” she said, recklessly. “The first chance I have to exchange you for a real man your day is over.”

“You think any one else would marry you?”

“I don’t think. I just go ahead grabbing everything I can, and when a person has to grab for someone else as well as herself it keeps them moving.”

“You’re a crude and impossible little fool.”

Without warning Trudy’s hand shot out, and on Gay’s cheek rested a red mark for the greater part of the evening.

A half hour later he was trying to apologize, having bucked himself up to it with brandy, in order to borrow enough money to play pool with that same evening.

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CHAPTER X

After Gay left, Trudy put on her things and trudged over to Mary’s house. Gay had driven off in the car and she was glad he had. Like Steve the day of the funeral, she did not wish to drive but to have the nervous outlet of walking.

Trudy was seldom angry. But when she found Mary in the old library, the same true-blue, good-looking thing with just a little coldness of manner as Trudy tried to enthuse over her, Trudy felt ashamed. And she was angry far more often than she was ashamed.

“Where is Luke?” she asked, taking off her things and lying down wearily on the sofa. “Oh, Mary mine, you don’t know how good it is to be here again, to be able to talk––really talk to someone.”

“Luke is at basketball–––” Mary began, stopping as she discovered that Trudy was in tears. “Why, what is it?” as Trudy sobbed the harsh, long sobs of a tormented and frail mind.

“You ought to hate me––selfish, insincere hypocrite––cheat––liar. Oh, I hate myself! I hate him, and Bea, and all of them! They aren’t worth your blessed little finger. Mary, Mary, please stay quite contrary and never change. Never get to be a Gorgeous Girl, will you? ... Nerves, I suppose; and I haven’t had the right things to eat.” She sat up and began smoothing her injured flounces.

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“You’re so thin, and there are funny lilac shadows under your eyes. You can’t live on nerve energy forever. And I know your delicatessen suppers or else the rich orgies to which you are invited––not enough sleep––and always that eternal upstage pose!”

“Gay wears on me; he is growing strong, with never an ache or pain. I never used to have them but I’m all unnerved and weak. He hates me, Mary. Yes, he does.” She began a detailed recital of woes.

“Why not leave him?” Mary asked as there came a pause.

“Without any one else to marry?” Trudy’s eyes were wide open in surprise.

“Must you have someone waiting to pay your board bill?”

“I couldn’t go to work again.”

“I thought you worked rather hard right now.”

“That’s different. I’m working to have a good time. And I’m a wonder; everyone says so. The clubmen are so nice to me. Beatrice has done a great deal, even if Steve hates us and acts as if we were poison.... He isn’t happy.”

Mary knew she was flushing. “Tell me some more about yourself.”

But Trudy was not to be swerved from the other topic. “Beatrice makes fun of him and she flirts shamefully. She has half a dozen flames all the time. One was a common cabaret singer; she had him for tea when Steve wasn’t there. Now she is tired of him. You see, she had to have someone to take Gay’s place! I don’t think Steve flirts with any one; he isn’t that sort. He’s so intense he will break his heart in the old-fashioned way and then go and be a 157 socialist or something dreadful. They scarcely see each other, and of course Beatrice’s father thinks everything is lovely and they are both perfection. He just can’t see the truth. Steve is a cave man and Beatrice is a butterfly––I’m a fraud––and you’re just an old dear!

“Yes, I am a fraud,” she said, with sudden honesty. “I wouldn’t come to see you unless I wanted something. I want to talk to you with all barriers down. I wish you had ever done some terrible thing or were unhappy. I don’t know why, Mary dear; it’s not as horrid as it sounds. I think it’s because I want to know the real soul of you, and if you showed me how you met troubles and trials, you being so good, I’d be the better woman for it in meeting my problems.”

It was truly a tired, oldish Trudy speaking. In the last sentence Trudy had touched the greatest depths of which she was capable––causing Mary to hint of her one deep secret.

“You’re growing up, that’s all. And I’m not good––not a bit good. Why, Trudy, do you know I have had to fight hard––terribly hard about something? I’ve never told any one before. I can’t really tell what it is!”

“Over what? You saint in white blouses and crisp ties, always smiling and working and helping people! How have you battled? Tell me, tell me!”

Mary came over to the sofa and sat beside Trudy, holding the white, cold hands laden with foolish rings. “I loved and do love someone very much who never did and never will love me. I must be near that person daily, be useful to him, earn my own living by so doing––and I’ve made myself be content of heart in spite of it and not live on starved hopes 158 and jealous dreams.... You see, I’m quite human.”

Trudy drew her hands away. She had caused Mary to confirm her suspicions, and she was sorry she had done so. The better part of her knew that she had been admitted into the very sanctuary of the girl’s soul, and that the worst part of her, which usually dominated, was not worthy to be trusted with such a secret. She wished Mary had not said the words––since it changed everything and made a singularly pleasing weapon to use against Beatrice O’Valley should occasion rise. Mary was good––and it was safer to slander a good person than a bad one because there was less chance of a come-back. As she tried to make herself forget what she had just heard she knew that in the heat of anger or to gain some material goal she would use this effectual weapon without thinking and without remorse.

“Oh, my poor girl!” was all she said; and Mary, believing that Trudy so reverenced her secret that she was not going to stab it with clumsy words, kissed her and very practically set about getting a lunch.

Trudy went home taking some biscuit and half a cake with her, and by the time she reached the Touraine she was in a cheerful frame of mind once more. The relief of confession, the home food, and the knowledge of Mary’s secret had buoyed her up past caring for or considering Gay.

To her surprise Gay was at home, jubilant and repentant. He had won at pool and had also consumed some 1879 Burgundy, which conspired to make him adore his red-haired wife and tell her that he had quite deserved and enjoyed having his face smacked.

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The pool money in her safe keeping, visions of a new hat to wear at the next luncheon caused Trudy to equal his elation. Together they ate up Mary’s biscuits and cake and talked about Beatrice’s remodelling the Constantine mansion at the cost of many thousands.

“We could almost retire,” Trudy suggested; “but I’m afraid Steve will never give his consent.”

“Don’t worry. Bea would never let a little thing like a husband stand in the way of her progress.”

In March, just as Steve was returning, Beatrice and her aunt departed for a whirl in Florida, with a laconic invitation that Steve and his father-in-law follow them. Steve declined the invitation with alarming curtness.

Though Constantine worried in his peculiar way because Steve did not rush down to Florida to play with the rest of the snapping turtles Beatrice had about her heels he did not succeed in getting anything but a logical explanation as to a business rush from his son-in-law. More and more Steve was being saddled with Constantine’s end of the game as well as his own––and he did not know how to proceed with the double responsibility. So Constantine went to Florida alone, to find his daughter revelling in new frocks and flirtations, both of which she temporarily sidetracked while she made her father give his consent to having the house done over after the manner of a Frascati villa.

“Gad,” commented her father, during the heat of the argument, “I thought you were pretty well off as you were. Will Steve like it?”

“He doesn’t care what I do,” she hastened to assure him. “Of course he will––he ought to––I’m 160 paying for it. He’ll have as wonderful a home as there is in the United States. Alice’s will be a caricature by contrast. Gay says so. As soon as we go home I’m going to signal them to begin.”

“Well, don’t touch my room or I’ll burn down the whole plant,” her father warned. “And if I were you I’d tell Steve first––it’s only right.”

“But it’s my money,” she insisted.

“Yes, yes, I know––but you could pretend to consult him. Your mother and I never bought a toothpick that we hadn’t agreed on beforehand.”

“Dear old papa.” She kissed him graciously by way of dismissal.

So Steve received the letter announcing the plans a few days later. It was a semi-patronizing, semi-affectionate letter with a great many underlined words and superlative adjectives and intended to convey the impression that he was a mighty lucky chap to have married a fairy princess who would spend her ducats in rigging up an uncomfortable moth-eaten villa of the days of kingdom come.

As he finished it Gay appeared, having received a letter telling him to hurry ahead with the plans and contracts. Gay was rather obsequious in his manner since he did not know whether it was Steve or Beatrice who was to pay for this transformation.

“If my wife insists, go ahead––but don’t move your arts-and-crafts shop into my office. I’m not enough interested to see designs and so on. I never had time to be one of the leisure class, and I’m too old to be kidded into thinking I’m one of them now. But I did make a mistake,” he added, slowly, whether for Gay’s benefit or not no one could tell––“I thought the world owed me more than a living––that it owed 161 me a bargain. And there never was a bargain cheaply won that didn’t prove a white elephant in time.”

Gay’s one-cylinder brain did not follow the intricacies of the statement. He merely thought of Steve in more than usually profane terms––and concluded that Beatrice was paying the bill.

162

CHAPTER XI

It was April before Steve found himself visiting with Mary Faithful again and admiring as heartily as Luke had admired the new apartment Mary had chosen for her family.

It had, to Steve’s mind, the same delightful air of freedom and attractive shabbiness that he had come to consider as essential for a true home. While Beatrice was launched on her new object in life––making the house into a villa, from upholstering a gondola in sky-blue satin and expecting people to use it as a sofa to having the walls frescoed with fat, pouting cherubs––Mary had selected funny old chairs and soft shades of blue cretonne found in the remnant department, queer pottery, Indian blankets, and a set of blue dishes which just naturally demanded to be heaped with good things and eaten before an open fire at Sunday-night supper.

The whole expense came within Mary’s economical pocketbook, yet it seemed to Steve to have the combined richness of a Persian palace and the geniality of a nursery on Christmas Eve.

He deliberately invented an excuse to call, some detail of work which, more easily than not, could have waited until the next day. He was not only using the detail of work as a means to visit Mary but as an excuse to escape a parlour lecture on “What astral vibrations does your given name bring you?” by a pale-faced young woman. The pale-faced 163 young woman boasted of an advanced soul and was making a snug bank account from the rich set in undertaking occult analyses of their names by which to decide whether or not the accompanying astral vibrations harmonized with their auras; and if they did not––and were therefore detrimental and hampering to spiritual development and material progress––she would evolve occult names for them which would be sort of spiritual bits of cheese in material mousetraps baiting and capturing all the good things of this world and the next.

Convinced that Beatrice was not the proper name for her the Gorgeous Girl had ordered a chart of cabalistic signs and mystical statements, the sum total of which was that Radia was the name the astral forces wished her to be called, and by using this name she would develop into a wonderful medium. She paid fifty dollars to discover that she ought to be called Radia and that her aura was of smoky lavender, denoting an advanced soul––according to the pale-faced young woman, who had tired of teaching nonsensical flappers, had no chance to marry, and had hit upon this as her means of painlessly extracting a little joie de vie.

Declining to learn his astral name Steve left Gaylord to mop up the astral vibrations. Beatrice did not mind his absence though he neglected to say that the work was to be done at Miss Faithful’s apartment and not at the office. Never having questioned Steve in such details Beatrice merely murmured inwardly that goat tending in one’s past strangely enough led to pigheadedness in later life. It was a relief to have him away, for if drawn into an argument he still thumped his fists. For everyday living 164 Beatrice preferred her own pet robins and angel-ducks, as she called the boys of the younger set, who flocked to flirt with her because she was extremely rich and pretty and they were in no danger of being matrimonially entangled.

Of course Gaylord ate up this occult-name affair. It was discovered that Gaylord’s was a most hampering name and had his parents only consulted the stars and named him Scintar––who knows to what heights he might not have risen? Trudy’s astral title should have been Urcia, which she now adopted, blushing deeply as she recalled the vulgar Babseley and Bubseley of former days. But when Aunt Belle was informed that Cinil was the cognomen needed to make her discover an Indian-summer millionaire waiting to bestow his heart upon her Mark Constantine had packed his bags and departed unceremoniously for Hot Springs.

Meantime, Mary did not know just how to treat this imperious lonesome young man who came boldly into her household without apology or warning.

“You don’t know how often I’ve wanted to come and see you,” he said, unashamedly, delighted that Luke was out of the way and he could play in his fashion the same as Beatrice did in hers. “It isn’t business, really. I just wanted to talk to you. You assume so much formality at the office that though I admit it may be wise I miss the real you.”

“You mean you just trumped up an excuse–––”

Then Mary began to laugh.

“I do. The DeGraff muddle can wait. It’s nice to be able just to sprawl about––sprawl in a comfortable old chair. I like this little room. We 165 are being turned into an Italian villa, you know. I don’t quite see how I’ll ever live up to it.” As he spoke he took out a plebeian tobacco pouch and a nondescript pipe. “May I?”

“Do! Only you ought not to be here at all”––trying to be severe, and failing.

“Why not?”

“Because you think only of yourself and of what you wish,” she surprised him by answering. “Why not think of the other chap occasionally?”

He paused in the lighting of his pipe. “Oh––you mean my coming here.” He looked like an unjustly punished child without redress. “You mean to consign me to the gloom of the grill room or one of those slippery leather chairs in a far corner of the club? Come, you can’t say that. I won’t listen if you do. I just want to be friends with someone.”

With unsuspected coquetry she suggested: “Why not your wife?”

“We’re not friends––merely married.” He lit his pipe and flipped the match away. “Cheap to say, isn’t it? Don’t look at me like that; you make me quite conscience-stricken. You seem to be aiming at me as directly as a small boy aims his snowball. Why?”

“It wouldn’t do the slightest good to tell you what I think.”

“Yes, it would; someone must tell me. I’ve never been as lonesome in my life as now––when I’m a rich man and the husband of a very lovely woman. It sort of chills me to the marrow at first thought. I’ve been in a delirium, quite irresponsible. These last few months I’ve been coming down to earth. Only instead of getting my feet planted firmly on the sod 166 I think I’ve struck a quicksand bed. I say, lend us a hand.”

“Why ask me?”

“I don’t just know. I don’t think I shall ever be quite so sure of anything again. After all, a person has just so much capacity for joy and sorrow, and so much energy, and so much will power, allotted at birth; and if he chooses to go burn it all up in one fell swoop doing one thing––he is at liberty to do so; but he is not given any second helping. Isn’t that true? Quite a terrible thing to realize when you know you used up your joy allotment in anticipation––and it has been so much keener and finer than any of the realization. And all my energy went into making money the easiest way I could; but it does not pay.”

Mary clasped her hands tightly in her lap; she was afraid to let him see her joy at the long-awaited confession.

“Yet you ask me, a reliable machine, to help you in your perplexities?”

“I don’t think of you as a capable machine any more. I used to, that is true enough. I didn’t know or care whether your hair was red or your eyes green––but I know now that you have gray eyes, and–––”

“You really want to know my opinions?” she interrupted, breathlessly.

“As much as I used to seek out the stock reports.”

“Well––I think people who have planned as exactly as you and Mr. Constantine have planned always banish real principle at the start. After a time you are punished by having an almost fungous growth of sickly conscience––you don’t want to face 167 the truth of things, yet isolated incidents, sentimental memories, certain sights and definite statements annoy, haunt, heartbreak you! Still, you have lost your principle, the backbone of the soul, and the fungus-like growth of conscience is such a clumsy imitation––like a paper rose stuck in the ground. Mr. Constantine’s type––your type––is flourishing and multiplying among us, I fear, and such are the wishbone, or sickly conscience, and not the backbone, or sterling principle, of the nation. After all, fortunes alone do not make real gentility––thanks be! But you know as well as I that all the––the Gorgeous Girls and their kind and you and I and the next chap we meet belong to the great majority, and of that we have every right to be proud.

“Furthermore, we ought to hold to our place in the social scheme and be the backbone of the nation, keep our principle and not be nagged eternally by a sickly conscience after we have gone and sold our birthrights. Gorgeous Girls and their sort have the sole fortification of dollars, endless dollars, endless price tags; their whims bring whole wings of foreign castles floating across the ocean by the wholesale to be reassembled somewhere in good old helpless Illinois or New Jersey. And these people try to be everything but good old American stock––which is quite wrong, for their example causes spendthrifts and Bolsheviki to flourish without end.”

“Go on,” he said, almost sulkily, as she paused.

“I’ve watched it for thirteen years from the various angles of the working girl with an average amount of brain and disposition. When all is said and done you really have to work before you have earned the right to pass judgment––work––not read or patronize or 168 take someone else’s statements as final. Do you know how I used to identify the kinds of people that rode in the street cars with me?... From seven until eight there were the Frumps. The majority boasted of white kid boots or someone’s discarded near-electric-seal jacket, plumes in their hats, and an absence of warm woollens. And everyone yawned, between patting thin cheeks with soiled face chamois, ‘What d’ja do las’ night?’

“From eight to nine came the Funnies; and the majority had white kid boots and flimsy silk frocks cut as low as our grandmothers’ party gowns, and plumes in their hats and silver vanity cases. Their main topics of conversation were: ‘He said,’ and ‘She said,’ and ‘I don’t care if I’m late. I’m going to quit anyway!’

“From nine until noon came the Frills––the wives of modest-salaried men who cannot motor, yet write to out-of-town relatives that they do so.

“And every one of those Frumps, Funnies, and Frills apes the Gorgeous-Girl kind––white kids for shopping, low-cut pumps in January, bizarre coat, chiffon waist disclosing a thin little neck fairly panting for protection, rouged cheeks, and a plume in her hat––and not a cent of savings in the bank!

“Now there’s something wrong when we’ve come to this, and the wrong does not lie with these people but with those they imitate––Gorgeous Girls, new-rich with sickly consciences and lack of principle and common sense; and these Gorgeous Girls in turn take their styles, slang phrases, and modes of recreation, as well as theories of life from the boldest dancer, the most sensational chorus girl––and it’s wrong and not what America should be called upon to endure. 169 And it all reverts back in a sense to you busy, unprincipled, yet conscience-stricken American business men who write checks for these Gorgeous Girls––and the heathen in Africa––and wonder why golf doesn’t bring your blood pressure down to normal––when your grandfather had such a wonderful constitution at eighty-four! Don’t you know that get-rich-quick people always pay a usurer’s interest on the suddenly accumulated principle?”

“Keep on,” he said in the same surly tone.

“And when I go downtown and view the weary, unwashed females and the overly ambitious painted ones, people in impossible bargain shoes and summer furs; fat men in plaid suits and Alpine hats; undernourished children being dragged along by unthinking adults; stray dogs wistfully sniffing at passers-by in hopes of finding a permanent friend; tired, blind work horses standing in the sun and resignedly being overloaded for the day’s haul; fire sales of fur coats; candy sales of gooey hunks; a jewellery special of earrings warranted to betray no tarnish until well after Christmas; brokers’ ads and vaudeville billboards and rows upon rows of awful, huddled-up, gardenless homes with families lodged somewhere between the first and twelfth stories––the general chasing after nothing, saving nothing and, saddest of all, the complacent delusion that they have achieved something well worth while––it makes me willing to earn and learn as I do.”

“Don’t leave me in the quicksand. What can we do about it?”

“Make that sort of American woman realize that she is more needed in the home and can accomplish more with that as her goal than in any other place in 170 the world. You don’t know all my dreams for the American woman––don’t you think that this Gorgeous Girl parasitical type is a result of the Victorian revolt? Too late for themselves the Victorian matrons said: ‘Our daughters shall never slave as we have done; they shall be ladies––and have careers, too, bless their hearts.’ The Victorian matrons were emerging from the unfair conditions of ignorance and drudgery and they could realize only one side of the argument––that all work and no play made Jill quite a stupid girl.

“But we must grasp the other side of the matter––that all play and no work make her simply impossible; that culture and self-sufficiency can go hand in hand. The American woman really is––and must continue to be––the all-round, regular fellow of the feminine world. Then she will not only teach a great and needed truth to her backward European sisters but she will produce a great future race. American women have tried frivolity in nearly every form and they have worked seriously likewise; they have intruded into men’s professions and careers and in cases have beaten men at their own game. They have successfully broken down the narrow prejudice and limitations which the Victorian era tried making immortal under the title of sentiment––but after they have had the reward of victory and the knowledge of the game, why not be square, as they really are, and do the part the Great Plan meant them to do? Be women first––let the career take the woman if need be, but always thank the good Lord if it needn’t be.”

“And to think you have been working for me,” Steve said, softly.

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“I know that culture and enjoyment of life may be yoked with so-called drudgery. I know, too, that women are retiring not in defeat but with honour and victory in its truest sense when they step out of business life back to their homes. Nor are they empty-handed like the Victorian matrons; but with the energy of tried and true warriors, the ballot in one hand, the child led by the other, they are in a position to right old wrongs, for they have won new rights. They will be able to put into practice in their homes all they have gleaned from the sojourn in the world; the ill-given service of unfitted menials will disappear, as will waste and nerve-racking detail.

“And love must be the leavener of it all––with all her progress and her ability, trained talents and clever logic, the American woman must not and will not renounce her romance––for it is part of God’s very promise of immortality.”

“How often may I come here?” he begged.

Mary shook her head. “You’ve got me started, as Luke says, and I’m hard to check. But have you never thought that out of all the world the American woman is the only woman who cooks and serves her dinner if it is necessary, adjourns to her parlour afterward and discusses poetry and politics and the latest style hat with her guests? For she has learned how to possess true democracy, not rebellion, courage and not hysterical threats to play the rebel, the slacker.

“And now I’ll make you a cup of coffee. And never let me catch you here again!”

When Luke arrived home he found Steve O’Valley basking in the big chair he was wont to occupy, though it was past ten o’clock and he had anticipated 172 questions from Mary as to his tardiness. Instead he found a very rosy-cheeked, almost sunrise-eyed sister who stammered her greeting as the flustered Mr. O’Valley found his hat and the neglected business portfolio and took his leave.

173

CHAPTER XII

To keep down the rising tide of overweight Beatrice abandoned the occult method of having a good time and turned her interest to new creeds containing continual bogus joy and a denial of the vicarious theory of life. But when she discovered that optimism was no deterrent to the oncoming tide of flesh she began a vigorous course in face bleaching, reducing, massage, and electrical treatments, with Trudy playing attentive friend and confidante and secretly chuckling over the Gorgeous Girl’s fast-appearing double chin and her disappearing waistline.

The extensive work of making the house into an Italian villa kept Beatrice from brooding too much over her embonpoint. She enjoyed the endless conferences with the decorators, drapers, artists, and who-nots, with Gay’s suave, flattering little self always at her elbow, his tactful remarks about So-and-so being altogether too thin, and the wonderful nutritive value of chocolate.

“Bea will look like a fishwife when she is forty,” he told Trudy soon after the villa was under way and the first anniversary drew near. “She eats as much candy in a week as an orphan asylum on Christmas Day. Why doesn’t someone tell her to stop?”

Gay felt rather kindly toward Beatrice, for his commissions from the villa transformation made him secure for some time to come; Alice Twill’s idea of a 174 French château, however, had blown up unexpectedly.

“Well, why don’t people tell you that you look an utter fool with that extra-intelligent edition of tortoise-shell glasses that you wear?” Trudy retorted. Gay was her husband and her property as long as she saw fit to stay his wife, and she did not approve of his constant attendance on the Gorgeous Girl. Even her deliberate retaliation by flirting with the gouty-toe brigade did not make amends. She had moments of depression similar to the time she had learned Mary’s secret. But she did not go back to Mary in the same abandoned spirit. It would never do. If she were not careful she would begin to think for herself and want to take to sensible shoes and a real job, hating herself so utterly that she could never have any more good times. So she saw Mary only at intervals and tried to do nice trifles for her. Trudy was thinner than ever and she had an annoying cough. She still used a can opener as an aide-de-camp in housekeeping and laughed at snow flurries in her low shoes and gauze-like draperies.

It delighted her to have Beatrice become heavy of figure––it almost gave her a hold on her, she fancied––for Beatrice sighed with envy at Trudy’s one hundred and ten pounds and used Trudy as an argument for eating candy.

“Trudy eats candy, lots of it, and she stays thin,” she told Steve.

“Yes; but she works and you don’t. You don’t even pay a gymnasium instructor for daily perseverance, for you could do exercises yourself if you wanted. You sleep late and keep the house like the equator,” he continued.

175

Beatrice looked at him in scorn. “Do I ever please you?”

“You married me,” he said, gallantly.

“When I did that I was thinking about pleasing only you, I’m afraid,” was his reward. “I wish you would study French––you have such a queer education you can’t help having queer ideas. And you can’t always go along with such funny views and be like papa. There isn’t room for two in the same family.”

“Do you know the Bible?” he demanded.

Beatrice giggled.

“There you are! You think I haven’t studied in my own fashion. Well, if you did know the Bible intellectually, and Milton–––”

“It sounds like a correspondence-school course. Don’t, Stevuns! Do you know the latest dance from Spain––the paso-doble? Of course you don’t. You don’t know any of the romance of the Ming Dynasty or how to tell a Tanagra figurine from a plaster-of-paris shepherdess. You haven’t read a single Russian novel; you just glare and stare when they’re mentioned. You won’t play bridge, you can’t sing or make shadow pictures or imitate any one. Good gracious, now that you’ve made a fortune––enjoy it!”

Steve was silent. It was not only futile to argue––it was nerve-racking. Besides, he had found someone else with whom argument was a rare joy and a personal gain––Mary Faithful. At frequent intervals he had won a welcome at the doorway of the little apartment. He almost wished that Beatrice would find it out and row about it, leaving him in peace. He had not yet assumed unselfish views as 176 to the matter. He was no longer in love with his wife but he was not yet in love with Mary. Instead he was passing through that interlude, whose brevity has made the world doubt its existence, known as platonic friendship. Platonic friendship does exist but it is like tropical twilight––the one whirlwind second in which brilliant sunshine and blue skies dip down and the stars and the moon dash up––and then the trick is done!

But like the thief who audaciously walks by the house of his victim, Steve was never accused of anything worse than using his leisure time to frequent those low restaurants where they serve everything on a two-inch-thick platter. Which, he had retorted, was a relief from eating turtle steak off green-glass dinner plates.

The first wedding anniversary was a rather disappointing affair since Beatrice had to remodel her wedding gown in order to wear it. That fact alone was distressing. And at the eleventh hour Steve was called out of town, which left Beatrice in the hands of her angel-duck brigade, who all felt it their duty to paint Steve in terms of reproach.

“Now Steve felt just as badly about going as you do to have him away,” her father said by way of clumsy consolation. “And he bought you a mighty handsome gift.”

“But I have one quite as lovely,” Beatrice objected. “It was unpardonable of him to go, even if there was a strike and a fire. Let the police arrest everybody.”

She laid aside the gift, a glittering head-dress in the form of platinum Mercury wings set with diamonds, fitting close to the head and giving a decided 177 Brunnhilde effect. “I hate duplicates; I always want something different and novel.”

“It’s a good thing I gave you a check,” said her father.

“Yes, because Gay can always find me something”––brightening. “And tell me, how is the salon fresco coming on?”

Her father held up his hands in protest. “Ask something easy. A mob of workmen and sleek gentlemen that tiptoe about like undertakers’ assistants––that’s all I know. But not one of them touches my room!”

“All right, papa.” She kissed him prettily. “And as I’m dead for sleep and aunty is snoring in her chair, suppose you wake her up and run along?”

Summoning Aunt Belle, who was approaching the Mrs. Skewton stage of wanting a continuous rose-curtain effect, Beatrice stood at the window with unusual affection to wave the last of her guests a good-bye.

She sat up until daylight, to her maid’s dismay, still in her remodelled wedding gown. She was thinking chaotic, rebellious, ridiculous nothings, punctuated with uneven ragged thoughts about matching gloves to gowns or getting potted goose livers at the East-Side store Trudy had just recommended. The general trend of her reverie was the dissatisfaction not over this first year of married life but at the twenty-seven years as a Gorgeous Girl, the disappointment at not having some vital impelling thing to do, which should of course supply a good time as well as a desirable achievement. The inherited energy was demanding an outlet. She recalled the evening’s entertainment––a paper chase with every room left littered and disordered, 178 her lace flounce badly torn, her head thumping with pain, the latest dances, the inane music, the scandal whispered between numbers, the elaborate supper and favours, the elaborate farewells––and the elaborate lies about the charm of the hostess and the good time.

She began to envy Steve as well as Trudy, Steve in his hotel busy with Labour delegates, wrangling, demanding, threatening, winning or losing as the case might be. She, too, must do something. She had finished with another series of adventures––that of being a mad butterfly. It was shelved with the months of a romantic, parasitical existence misnaming jealous monopoly as love, an existence which all at once seemed as long ago as another lifetime.

She would now be an advanced woman, intellectual, daring; she would allow her stunted abilities to have definite expression. Either she would find a new circle of friends or else swerve the course of the present circle into an atmosphere of Ibsen, Pater, advanced feminine thought, and so on––with Egyptology as a special side line. She would even become an advocate of parlour socialism, perhaps. She would encourage languid poets and sarcastic sex novelists with matted hair and puff satin ties. She would seek out short-haired mannish women with theories and oodles of unpublished short stories, and feed them well, opening her house for their drawing-room talks. She would be a lion tamer! She was done with sighing and tears, belonging to the first stage of Glorious Girlism; and with pouting and flirting, which belonged to the second––she would now make them roar, herself included!

At noon the next day she sought Mary Faithful 179 in her office, to everyone’s surprise. To her own astonishment she discovered her husband busily engaged in conversation with some members of the Board of Trade, his travelling bag on a side table.

“I didn’t bother to telephone you or wire––I got in at eight this morning and came right up here. I knew you’d not be up,” he added, curtly. “Would you mind waiting in Miss Faithful’s office until I’m at liberty?”

Beatrice was forced to consent graciously and pass into the other room, where Mary was giving dictation.