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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Gorgeous Girl, by Nalbro Bartley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Gorgeous Girl
+
+
+Author: Nalbro Bartley
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 22, 2009  [eBook #29753]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GORGEOUS GIRL***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 29753-h.htm or 29753-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29753/29753-h/29753-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29753/29753-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GORGEOUS GIRL
+
+by
+
+NALBRO BARTLEY
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "He was very diplomatic in his undertaking"]
+
+
+
+Garden City--New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+1920
+
+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
+
+  "He was very diplomatic in his undertaking"             Frontispiece
+                                                           FACING PAGE
+  "The Gorgeous Girl had never known anything but the
+      most gorgeous side of life"                                   12
+  "It was with a charming timidity that she tip-toed
+      into the office"                                             188
+  "A get-rich-quick man always pays for his own speed"             284
+
+
+
+
+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 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
+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
+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 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, 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, 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! 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 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.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: "The Gorgeous Girl had never known anything but the most
+gorgeous side of life"]
+
+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 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 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 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 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 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."
+
+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!"
+
+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!
+
+
+
+
+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 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 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
+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," 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 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
+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 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, 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 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 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 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.
+
+"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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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."
+
+"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."
+
+"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 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 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?"
+
+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 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."
+
+"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 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.
+
+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 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 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 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 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."
+
+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?"
+
+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 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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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 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 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 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.
+
+"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.
+
+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 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 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
+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. "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."
+
+"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 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?"
+
+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 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 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 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!
+
+
+
+
+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."
+
+"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 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 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.
+
+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, 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.
+
+"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----"
+
+"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 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 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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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 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.
+
+"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?"
+
+
+
+
+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, 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 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 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 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
+
+"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 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 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."
+
+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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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 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 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."
+
+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 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
+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."
+
+"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.
+
+"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 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 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 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 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!
+
+
+
+
+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 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 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 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."
+
+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 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.
+
+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
+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 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."
+
+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 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 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 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 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.
+
+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!"
+
+
+
+
+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, 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.
+
+"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 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 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 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 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 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.
+
+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 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 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, 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 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 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.
+
+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?"
+
+"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.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+"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 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 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.
+
+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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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.
+
+"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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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.
+
+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 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 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, 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 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.
+
+When Mary finished she offered Beatrice a magazine but the Gorgeous
+Girl declined it and began in petulant fashion:
+
+"I've been thinking about you, Miss Faithful, and I do envy you. Do
+you know why? You have more of my husband than I have; that was what I
+came to tell you. For business is his very life and you are his
+business partner. I only have the tired remnant that occasionally
+wanders homeward."
+
+Mary wondered what Beatrice would say if she knew of the supper talks
+she had had with the tired remnant, who flung discretion to the winds
+and clamoured for invitations as keenly as he had once begged for the
+Gorgeous Girl's kisses.
+
+"Oh, no, that's not true. You see----" she began, but she simply could
+not finish the lie.
+
+"I've decided that if business is more important to my husband than
+his wedding anniversary I shall be of importance to him in his
+business," she continued. "Be careful--you've a rival looming ahead."
+
+Steve opened the door and nodded for his wife to come in. Mary was
+left with rather unsteady nerves and a pessimistic attitude to round
+out her day. Beatrice's hint had had an unpleasant petty sound that
+she did not quite understand. She wished she had never allowed Steve
+to draw her out of her businesslike attitude. However, when she
+learned that he had very unexpectedly called off work for the rest of
+the day to do his wife's bidding she told herself she was needlessly
+alarmed, though it was always a rash thing to try exchanging her
+heartache for a temporary joyful mirage!
+
+The next evening, when Mary was in the throes of explaining this thing
+in guarded fashion to Steve and Steve was arguing angrily and begging
+for his welcome, Trudy Vondeplosshe happened in unexpectedly and very
+much rejoiced inwardly at finding this delightful little tête-à-tête
+in full progress.
+
+Of course the couple gave business and the recent strike as an
+alarming necessity for a private conference, and then Steve scuttled
+away, leaving Mary to try to look unconscious and change the subject
+to Trudy's new hat. But ever mindful of Mary's confession Trudy was
+not to be swerved from the topic.
+
+"I'm glad Beatrice was not with me," she said, sweetly, "for like all
+heartless flirts she is jealous--ashamed of Steve half of the time and
+mad about him the other half. I'd try to have the business all
+transacted at the office. You used to. And Beatrice says business
+isn't half as brisk as it was then."
+
+The upshot of the matter resulted in Mary's applying for a two-months'
+leave of absence. Spent in the Far North woods with Luke it would make
+common sense win over starved dreams.
+
+"I think I've earned it," was all she said to Steve.
+
+"A year ago I went away and you stayed. Of course you have earned it.
+But I am going to miss you."
+
+The day before she left--it was well into July before she could
+conscientiously see her way clear to go--she received a plaid steamer
+rug. There was no card attached to the gift, and when she was summoned
+to Steve's apartment to inform him about some matters, Steve having a
+slight attack of grippe, she was so formal to both Steve and Beatrice,
+who stayed in the room, making them very conscious of her apricot
+satin and cream-lace presence, that Beatrice remarked later:
+
+"It's a fortunate thing that she isn't going to visit the North Pole;
+she'd be so chilly when she returned you'd have to wrap the entire
+office in a warming pad. I was thinking this morning that with the way
+she lives and manages she must have saved some money. Do you know if
+she has--and how much? I hope you won't pay her her salary while she
+is gone. It's no wonder she can afford nervous prostration if you
+do!"
+
+"I didn't know she had it," Steve said, dully.
+
+"Whatever it is, then, that makes her take all this time. The way
+employees act, walking roughshod in their rights! And now, deary,
+hurry and get well, for I've a wonderful surprise for you." She knelt
+beside the couch and patted his cheek. "I'm going to be your private
+secretary during her absence--yes, I am. As soon as I finish making
+the mannikins for the knitting bags at the kermis. Then I'm going to
+try to take her place--well, a tiny part of her place to start with,
+and work into the position gradually. Yes, I am. I'm determined to try
+it. I've worried and worried to decide what to do with myself."
+
+Worry was Beatrice's sole form of prayer. Steve wondered if what Mary
+had recently said to him could be true, at least in his own case. She
+had said that defeat at thirty should be an incentive--only after
+fifty could it be counted a definite disaster.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+"You don't know how I've missed you," Steve told Mary upon her return.
+"Don't I look it?" he added, wistfully.
+
+Mary had appeared at the office late one September afternoon rather
+than appear the following morning as a model of exact punctuality.
+She had had to force herself to remain away until her leave of
+absence expired. It was Luke who rejoiced in the freedom of the
+woods and the green growing things in which his sister had tried to
+take consolation, telling herself they would revive her common sense
+and banish absurd notions concerning Steve O'Valley. It was Luke
+who rejoiced at catching the largest trout of the season, who never
+wearied of hayrack rides and corn roasts and bonfires with circles of
+ghostlike figures enduring the smoke and the damp and the rapid-fire
+gossiping and giggling. Luke had returned with a healthy coat of tan
+and a large correspondence list, pledging himself to revisit the
+spot every season.
+
+But Mary felt defeated in the very purpose of her holiday. The
+atmosphere of weary school-teachers trying to appear as golden-haired
+flappers foot-loose for a romance; the white shoes always drying
+outside tents or along window sills; the college professors eternally
+talking about their one three-months' tour of Europe; the mosquitoes;
+the professional invalid, the inevitable divorcee; the woman with
+literary ambitions and a typewriter set in action on the greenest,
+most secluded spot for miles about; the constant snapshotting of
+everything from an angleworm to a group of arm-entwined bathers about
+to play splash-me; the cheap talk and aping of such Gorgeous Girls as
+Beatrice Constantine--all this on one side, and a great and eternal
+loneliness for Steve on the other.
+
+It was small wonder that defeat was the result. And yet in her heart
+of hearts Mary was glad that it was so. There is something splendid
+and breathless in trying to shut away a forbidden rapture, and being
+unable to do so; in telling oneself one will never try repression
+again but will shamelessly acknowledge the forbidden rapture and
+register a desire to thrill to it whenever possible.
+
+Besides the irritations of the summer camp Mary had been forced to
+leave Hanover remembering Steve as ill, worried over business; of
+Beatrice's hinting that she would usurp her place. There had been so
+many womanly trifles she would have done for Steve had she been in
+Beatrice's position--a linen cover for the water glass; a soft shade
+on the window instead of the glaring white-and-gold-striped affair;
+exile for that ubiquitous spaniel; home cooking, with old-fashioned
+milk toast and real coffee of a forefather's day.
+
+Strange how such homey trifles persist in the mind of a commercial nun
+through two months of supposed enjoyment and liberty. In the same way
+incongruous associations of ideas spring into the brain with no
+apparent reason at all causing fossilized professors to write
+essays-under-glass that elucidate matters not in the slightest.
+
+So Mary returned to the office two days ahead of time, her heart
+thumping so loudly that she thought Miss Lunk would surely detect the
+sound. She deliberately dressed herself in a demure new suit and a
+becoming black-winged hat which made her seem as if delightfully
+arrayed for afternoon tea. And it was with a charming timidity that
+she tiptoed into the office.
+
+Before Steve had asked her opinion she had given one swift look about
+the two offices, and she was glad that they looked as they did. It
+would have been disappointing to have found them spick and span and
+quite self-sufficient, without a hint that Mary Faithful was missed or
+irreplaceable.
+
+Evidences of Beatrice's brief sojourn in the business world still
+remained--an elaborate easy-chair with rose pillows, a thermos bottle
+and cut-glass tumbler, a curlicue French mirror slightly awry and, on
+her desk, a gay-bordered silk handkerchief, a silver-mesh bag, and a
+great amount of cluttered notations; all of which proved that the
+understudy secretary had not yet mastered the law of efficiency.
+
+It seemed amusing to Mary. She thought: "How stupid! How can she--when
+the wicker basket is the one logical place for----"
+
+Then she spied Steve's desk, bearing a suggestion of the same disorder
+about it. When she spoke his name and he started up, holding out both
+hands, she saw a queer, bright look in his eyes, as if he, too, were
+trying to convince himself that everything was all right.
+
+"So you really missed me?"
+
+"Missed you! Heaven alone can record the unselfish struggle I endured
+to let you play. I give you my word."
+
+He wheeled up a chair for her, just as he used to wheel up a chair
+for Beatrice, and sitting opposite him Mary heard an almost womanish
+enumeration of petty troubles and disturbances, a pathetic threat as
+to the avalanche of work which would await her in the morning.
+
+"And now I will be polite enough to ask if you had a good time?"
+
+"Very! And Mrs. O'Valley?"
+
+It was so horrid to have to pretend when each knew the other was
+pretending; and as they pretended to the world in general, what a
+relief and blessed lightening of tension it would have been to have
+said merely an honest: "We don't care about Mrs. Gorgeous Girl or any
+one else. We are quite content with each other. True, this is still
+platonic friendship--with one of us--but all tropical twilight is of
+short duration. It won't be platonic much longer. So let's talk about
+ourselves all we like!"
+
+But being thoroughbred young persons they felt it was not the thing
+even to think frankly.
+
+"She is well," Steve said, briefly.
+
+"She came down here, she wrote me, when she wanted to find out about
+something or other. I've forgotten just what."
+
+Steve smiled. "Yes, for nearly a week Mrs. O'Valley managed to create
+a furore among her own set. Before she came here she ordered an entire
+new outfit of clothes--business togs. There were queer hats and shirt
+waists and things." He laughed at the remembrance. "Then she had to
+practise getting up early; that took a lot of time. Meanwhile, Miss
+Sartwell did your work just as we planned. It was found necessary to
+postpone her business career still further because of an out-of-door
+pageant that required her services as a nymph. She caught cold at
+rehearsal and enjoyed a week of indoors.
+
+"Then Gay turned up with a whole flock of new decorators for the
+d----for the villa thing, and I was left without aid from the
+_ennuied_ for another ten days. Jill Briggs had a wedding anniversary
+and relied on Beatrice's aid. Of course she could not refuse, and
+Trudy, who, by the way, has come on very rapidly, persuaded Beatrice
+to take a booth at a charity kettledrum.
+
+"So after several weeks my wife appeared on my business horizon and
+hung that mirror up and had those other things moved in and then she
+discovered that the impudent girls were all copying her coats and hats
+and stuff and even used her sort of perfume, and she decided that her
+duty lay not in making me a competent secretary but in reforming these
+extravagant young persons so that she could wear a model gown in
+comfort and not see it copied within a month. It was quite an
+experience for her; she was here about five days. Miss Sartwell just
+moved her desk out there and we managed nicely. Beatrice also had a
+private teacher for typewriting and so on, but she gave it all up
+because she felt the confinement and long hours made her head ache and
+she gained weight. She fled in haste. Sorry she had to do so, but
+under the circumstances it was better to jeopardize my business career
+than her own figure!"
+
+"Aren't you a little unfair?" Mary said, seriously.
+
+"Am I? I never thought so. Wait--I must finish the tale. For a whole
+week after being my business partner she tried what she called
+holiness as a cosmetic, and became high-church and quite trying. At
+the end of that time she felt a veritable dynamo of nerves and
+scandal and proceeded to become a liberated and advanced woman. You'll
+soon enough see what I mean. She doesn't run to short-haired ladies
+with theories so much as to hollow-eyed gentlemen embroidering cantos
+in the drawing room and trying to make the world safe for poetry.
+De-luxe adventuresses strike her as harmonious just now. You'll hear
+about one Sezanne del Monte who is staying in town and living off of
+Bea and her set."
+
+"The woman who is divorced every season--and stars in musical
+comedy?"
+
+"The same. Sezanne is now writing the intimate story of her life; sort
+of heart throbs instead of punctuation marks--lots of asterisks, you
+know, separating the paragraphs. Beatrice is going to finance the
+publication of it and Gay is going to be the sales manager. Yes, it's
+funny, but a blamed nuisance when you come home and you find yourself
+wandering through a crowd of Sezanne del Montes and Gays and Trudys,
+all bent on playing parlour steeplechase, and you can't find a plain
+chair to sit down or eat a plain meal or read a newspaper. It's more
+than a blamed nuisance--it's cause for a trial by jury," he added,
+whimsically. "Now what's wrong?"--watching Mary's face.
+
+"It isn't cricket to tell all this."
+
+Somehow the old struggle began with renewed energy in Mary's heart,
+the puritanical part saying: "Forget you ever thought twice of this
+man"; and the dreamer part urging: "You have earned the right to love
+him. She has not. Just be fair--merely fair. You have the right; don't
+let your opportunity slip by."
+
+[Illustration: "It was with a charming timidity that she tip-toed into
+the office"]
+
+"Why can't I tell you? I have no one else to whom I can tell
+things--and I'm so everlastingly tired. Goat tending and living off
+dried buffalo meat never fagged me like trying to dance with Trudy and
+living on truffles and champagne. First you are mentally bewildered
+and physically fagged, then you become defiant; then you realize that
+that is no use, you've brought this on your own self--it is quite the
+common fate of men like myself--and so you keep on with the steady
+grind; and by and by you find yourself longing to play in your own way
+with your own sort. The other sort have no use for you so long as you
+pay their bills; you are hardly missed, if the truth were told.
+
+"Well, you must keep on with the grind. And you want your sort of
+playmates and fun, and it's such decent, upright fun in comparison--oh,
+pshaw!" He stood up, kicking the edge of the rug with his foot in
+almost boyish, shamed fashion.
+
+"Business isn't quite so good," he began anew in an impersonal, even
+voice. "Mr. Constantine thinks that the abnormal prosperity is on the
+wane for keeps--we must prepare for it--but Mr. Constantine has
+practically retired since you have been away. He's not well. To-morrow
+morning, if you don't mind, I'll take you over there and we can
+straighten out some things for him. He is selling the greater share of
+stock to men from the West. And he's saved out some pretty nice sugar
+plums to hand over to me. I haven't been asked whether or not I want
+them."
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+"I knew you would be, Miss Iconoclast."
+
+"Why do you accept them?"
+
+"How can I refuse?"
+
+"By saying you are not prepared to be a mental wreck at forty--which
+you will be if you try such a gigantic scheme with so little
+preparation. I've an idea that when Mr. Constantine is known to have
+withdrawn from the business world there will be a change in many
+things. And when you are known to be alone in the fort--" She paused.
+
+"Go on," he demanded, irritably. "Can I never make you understand how
+much I want your advice, your opinions, your scoldings?"
+
+"I think you will have new enemies with whom to deal--enemies you
+never thought existed. I don't believe you can deal with them because
+you have always been so cotton-woolled, so to speak, by being
+Constantine's special project----"
+
+"I've done what I've done myself," he interrupted, "and I'm afraid of
+no one."
+
+"You think you have," she corrected. "You have done what you have
+because Constantine was back of you--and now he is an old, tired man,
+and very soon he will think more of his days with Hannah than of the
+present. Which is perfectly safe for him to do. Because Mr.
+Constantine reckoned on his enemies he knew to a man who hated him and
+who was afraid of him, who admired him and who would be indifferent;
+and that is just as essential to success as to reckon on your friends.
+You never did that--you hadn't the time--it was all so dazzling and
+sudden with the war helping things along at breakneck speed. You will
+find that if you have an Achilles' heel it will be because you did not
+reckon on your enemies and are somewhat like a blindfolded man with
+money in your purse set down in a strange locality.... There. How does
+that sound for a welcome?"
+
+Steve was pacing up and down the floor. "I'd like enemies," he said.
+"I'd like to see them try jumping at my throat. I'd make them cry
+quits. You don't frighten me; you stimulate me."
+
+"That was my intention"--picking up her purse.
+
+"Don't go--or let me come to supper," he begged.
+
+She shook her head. Someone came in just then to whom she spoke of the
+pleasure it was to be back at the office; the word spread that Miss
+Faithful was back and girls came in groups to smile and say some
+pretty thing, and the men nodded with a pleased expression. Watching
+the procedure Steve realized that Mary was as dominant a personality
+in his office as he was himself, and instead of feeling a vague
+disapproval of the fact he was genuinely elated that it was so.
+
+After the last of the visitors had gone and the clock pointed to five
+he said: "Of course I'm going to be dragged some place this evening,
+so I wouldn't have much time--but may I come to supper? I'm going out
+of town next week. There, isn't that a good reason to come to-night?"
+
+"Suppose the world knew this--our little business world?"
+
+"Hang the world!"
+
+"You never did. You flattered it, and were delighted when the world
+patted you on the head and said, 'Nice Stevens, come in and bring your
+bags of gold--the living's fine.'"
+
+"Are you starting in to tell me that people would misunderstand my
+motives? Sezanne del Monte has chapters along those lines. And
+Beatrice has quite a fad of slumming and taking a notebook along to
+write down new slang phrases or oaths or bits of heart-broken
+philosophy spilled in a drunken moment.... I've grown careless to
+everything presumably orderly and conventional. I'm ready to walk the
+plank for my indifference if need be--but I do want to come home with
+you for supper!"
+
+Mary did not answer for a moment. Then she said, in a quick breathless
+tone, as if she did not want to hear her own words: "I wonder if it
+would do any good to try explaining--really explaining and not fibbing
+or pretending----"
+
+"It has always done me good when you have explained--and I can't
+imagine you telling cheap untruths."
+
+"Then I will try it." The gray eyes grew stormy. "For if we are to
+continue as employer and secretary--and you must have such a person
+and I must earn my living--it would be much easier if you really
+understood and it was all settled. You've talked about early
+hardships, misunderstood childhood, goat tending, and what not; and
+the world gives you credit for your achievements. Then surely you must
+understand the woman's end of the game--the American woman's part in
+business, for it's not easy to be errand girl or to fill endless
+underpaid clerical positions. It's not easy to pile out every morning
+at such and such an hour and stand at a desk and work as if you had
+neither heart nor eye for the other things in life until gradually the
+woman part of yourself is changed and it is often too late to enjoy
+anything but desk drudgery--and a bonus!
+
+"Now the man in the business game forgoes nothing; he has the world's
+applause if he succeeds and the kisses of the woman he loves for his
+recreation, and all is complete and as it should be. But we commercial
+women of to-day do a man's work and earn a man's wage. We do stay
+starved women, even if that fact doesn't appear on the surface. We
+cannot have the things of romance as well as our livelihood. And by
+the very nature of the average business woman's life she is often in
+love with someone in her office--from propinquity if for no other
+reason. She must. Don't you see? They're practically the only men she
+really comes to know or who come to know her, and she just can't stab
+her heart into sudden death.
+
+"So she wears her prettiest frock for this man--a wooden-faced
+bookkeeper perhaps; or a preoccupied president--and she dreams of him
+and is jealous of him and very likely gossips about him. And the years
+pass and she stays just as shut away and misunderstood and starved.
+And sometimes a woman, originally the most honest in the world, under
+these circumstances will deliberately steal another woman's husband if
+she has the chance. Yes, she will--she does."
+
+"What do you mean, Mary?" He was almost unconscious of using the
+name.
+
+"That I am no different from the others. I came here with the same
+starved heart and woman's hopes, and I put into your career the
+devotion and service and very prayers that I should have put into a
+home and a family--your joys were my joys, your problems mine. It has
+not been my clever brain that has made me worth so much to you. That
+is what the superficial public says, but I know better. It's been the
+love--yes, the love for you that has made me indispensable! The
+unreturned and unsuspected and I presume wicked love I felt for you.
+And now I've told you--broken precedent and told the truth. And as
+you don't love me you'll feel very uncomfortable with me about. And
+you won't want to play off pal; you'll fight shy of me except for
+everyday work. So it has been the only square thing to do--humiliate
+myself into telling.
+
+"I love you, I always have, and I always will--but I'm no home-wrecking,
+emotional being and I expect that you will resume our old relationships
+and I shall go on serving you and knowing my recompense will be a
+handsome farewell gift and a pension.
+
+"Oh, the business woman's life isn't all beer and skittles. We're
+expected to lie about our hearts, yet be as reliable as an adding
+machine about our columns of figures; to be shut away from the social
+world, thrown with men more hours a day than their wives see them and
+yet remain immovable, aloof, disinterested! Just good fellows, you
+know. Isn't it hideous to think I've really told the truth?"
+
+At this identical moment their platonic friendship, alias tropical
+twilight, ended, and Mary's evening star of romance rose to stay. But
+such being the case Steve was the last person in the world to try to
+convince her that it was so.
+
+All he said was: "I never appreciated you before. Please don't feel
+that telling me this will make any difference save that I'll stay
+aloof--as you suggest. I can forget it, somewhat, if that will make
+you feel any better about it. It is all quite true and equally
+hopeless--true things usually are--and if you like I'll send you home
+in the car, because you must be a trifle tired."
+
+"Thank you," she remembered answering as she told Steve's chauffeur
+where to drive.
+
+"You look as tired as before we went away," Luke complained that same
+night when Mary sat at her desk adding up expenses and making out
+checks.
+
+"Oh, no. This shade makes everyone look ghastly," she said.
+
+"I'll have to get a hump on and make my pile," he consoled. "I don't
+want my sister being all tired out before she's too old to have a good
+time."
+
+"A good time?" Mary repeated. "Are you inoculated, too?"
+
+"What's wrong with a good time? I guess Steve O'Valley plays all he
+likes!"
+
+"Yes, dear, I guess he does," Mary forced herself to answer.
+
+When Steve returned home that evening he found one of those impromptu
+dinner parties on hand instead of a formal engagement. They had become
+quite the fad in Bea's set. The idea was this--young matrons convened
+in the afternoon at one of their homes for cocktails and confidences;
+very likely Sezanne del Monte would drop in to read her last chapter
+or Gay Vondeplosshe would arrive brandishing his cane and telling
+everyone how beautiful the Italian villa was to be; and by and by they
+would gather round the piano to sing the latest songs; then when the
+clock struck six there would be a wild flutter and a suggestion:
+
+"Let's phone cook to bring over our dinner. Then our husbands can come
+along or not just as they like. We'll have a parlour picnic; and no
+one will bother about being dressed. And we'll go to the nickel dance
+hall later."
+
+This was followed by a procession of cooks arriving in state in
+various motor cars and carrying covered trays and vacuum bottles and
+departing in high spirits at the early close of their day's work.
+Then the procession of subdued husbands would follow, and conglomerate
+menus would be spread on a series of tea tables throughout the rooms,
+with Sezanne smoking her small amber-stemmed pipe and describing her
+sojourn in a Turkish harem while Gay picked minor chords on his
+ukulele. After a later diversion of nickel dance halls and slumming
+the young matrons would say good-bye, preparing to sleep until noon,
+quite convinced that any one would have called it a day.
+
+Such a party greeted Steve, with Gay showing plans for Beatrice's
+secret room with a sliding panel--clever idea, splendid when they
+would be playing hide and seek--and the cooks en route with the
+kettles and bottles of wine and the husbands meekly arriving in sulky
+silence.
+
+A little before two in the morning Steve escorted Aunt Belle back to
+the Constantine house.
+
+Beatrice had started to go to bed, but thinking of something she
+wished to ask Steve she stationed herself in his room, some candy near
+at hand and Sezanne's manuscript as solace until he should arrive.
+
+"I wanted to ask you if Mary Faithful has returned," she said,
+throwing down the manuscript as he came in. "Heavens, don't look like
+a thundercloud! You used to complain about getting into evening dress
+for dinner; and now when they are as informal as a church supper you
+row even more. How was papa? Did you go in to see him? Does the house
+look terrible?"
+
+"Of course I didn't see your father at two in the morning; he was
+asleep. Your aunt fell into a bucket of plaster."
+
+"Plaster! Why did the men leave it where she could fall into it? Did
+it hurt her dress?"
+
+"No, just her bones." Steve laughed in spite of himself. "The dress
+hadn't started to begin where the bones hit the bucket."
+
+Beatrice giggled. "Aunt Belle will try to look like a Kate Greenaway
+creation. And isn't Jill stout? I'd eat stones before I'd get like
+her. Well, what about the Faithful woman?"
+
+"Why such a title? It was always Mary Faithful, and even Mary."
+
+"I don't know--but ever since I worked with you this summer I've
+realized what an easy time she has. She isn't burdened with friends
+and social duties. It's all so clearcut and straight-ahead sailing for
+her. I suppose she laughs at her day's work."
+
+"She has returned."
+
+"Then we can go to the Berkshires. Sezanne knows an artist and some
+people from Chicago who are ripping company and they are going to
+visit her cousin at Great Barrington and we are all invited
+there----"
+
+"Once and for all," Steve said, shortly, to his own surprise, "I am
+not in on this! Just count yourself a fair young widow for the time
+being. I cannot run my business, help close up your father's affairs,
+be a social puppet, and go chasing off with bob-haired freaks to the
+Berkshires, and expect to survive. I'm going to work and keep on the
+job--it will be bad enough when I have to live in an Italian villa.
+Who knows what new tortures that will bring? But for a few months I am
+certain of my whereabouts, so plan on going alone."
+
+"So you won't come with me! Oh, Steve, sometimes I can just see the
+whole mistake--you should never have made a fortune. Rather you should
+have been a nice foreman with a meek little wife in four-dollar hats
+and a large portion of offspring. You should have lived in a model
+bungalow with even a broom closet in the kitchen and leaded windows at
+one side. You would have been a socialist and headed labour-union
+picnics. But as my husband and my father's assistant and all that--you
+are as impossible as that Faithful woman would be if she tried to be a
+lady!"
+
+For a moment Steve hesitated. But the average day does not include
+losing ten thousand on the stock exchange from sheer folly, finding
+out that your blood pressure is too high, that your faithful secretary
+loves you and is truer blue than ever, and discovering at the same
+moment that you love her yet may not tell her so. Nor is a day so
+hectic usually concluded by finding an impromptu parlour picnic in
+full swing at home where rest was sought--finding, too, the full
+realization that you not only do not love your wife but you do not
+even approve of her.
+
+So he said, quietly: "If you wish to make some radical change
+regarding your husband would you mind waiting until he has had a
+chance at a shower bath and some breakfast?"
+
+For the first time in her life the Gorgeous Girl found herself
+gathering up Monster, the candy, and the novel manuscript in her
+lace-draped arms and standing outside her husband's firmly closed
+door.
+
+The shock was so great that she could not squeeze out a single tear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Mary Faithful felt no regrets at having told the truth about her love
+for Steve O'Valley. The regrets were all on Steve's side of the
+ledger. Contrary to customary procedure it was he who practised
+nonchalance and indifference, and the office force saw no whit of
+difference in the attitude of the president toward his private
+secretary or vice versa.
+
+Long ago the force had accepted the attitude of these two persons as
+strictly businesslike and their conception of Mary Faithful was tinged
+with awe and a bit of envy at her success. To imagine her desperately
+in love with her employer, working for and with him each day, and
+finally in extreme desperation telling the truth as brutally as women
+sometimes tell it to women over clandestine cups of tea--was farthest
+from their comprehension.
+
+Nor would they have thought it credible that Steve, married to his
+coveted fairy princess, should first become attached to Mary Faithful
+by friendship and then find that friendship replaced by a deep and
+never-to-be-changed love. It was an impossible situation, they would
+have said.
+
+The morning following Beatrice's parlour picnic and Mary's hard-wrung
+confession Steve made it a point to be at his desk when Mary came in,
+despite the few hours' sleep and the fact that Beatrice had willfully
+chosen to take breakfast with him in sulky, tearful reproach. When
+Mary was taking off her hat and coat he came to the door of her office
+and made a formal little bow.
+
+He found himself more in love with her than the night previous. There
+was something so pathetic and lonely about her, successful business
+woman that she was; the very fact of people's not suspecting it,
+labelling her as self-sufficient and carefree, only emphasized this
+loneliness now that he looked at her with a lover's eyes. He realized
+that whereas he had had to win a fortune to marry the Gorgeous Girl it
+would be as necessary to lose a fortune to marry Mary--if such a thing
+were possible; that she was a woman not easy to win, one who would
+find her happiness not in taking hastily accumulated wealth but in
+making a man by slow processes and honourable methods until he was
+fitted to obtain a fortune and then enjoy it with her.
+
+"Good morning"--wondering if he looked confused--"I wanted to say that
+I am on the country-club committee to welcome English golfers, and
+I'll be away this week off and on. And--and whenever you want me to
+I'll try to keep under cover for a bit.... I think I do appreciate
+your telling me the truth last night more than anything else that has
+ever happened to me; there was something so stoically splendid about
+it--and I don't want to abuse the confidence. Please don't mind my
+just mentioning it, I'll promise not to do so again; and we'll go on
+as before. I was a cad to play about your fireplace--quite wrong--and
+you had to make me realize it. Do you know, I was half afraid you'd
+send in your resignation this morning? Women always do those things
+in books. Please say something and help a chap out."
+
+Mary was at her desk opening mail with slow, steady fingers.
+
+"I have my living and Luke's living to make, and I could not resign
+unless you asked me to do so," she told him. "I wondered whether or
+not you would feel it the thing for me to do. It is a unique
+situation," she said in a slightly more animated tone--"not the
+situation, but my calm betrayal of it. Usually my sort go along in
+silence and take our bursts of truthful rebellion on our mothers'
+shoulders or in sanitariums. I really feel a great deal better now
+that I have told you." Her gray eyes were quite fearless in their
+honesty as she glanced up. "I feel that I can settle down in an even
+routine and be of more service to everyone."
+
+"We'll be friends," he urged, impulsively. It seemed hard not to say
+foolish, loverish little things, try to make her believe in miracles,
+make wild and impossible rainbow plans, precluding any Gorgeous Girls
+and newly remodelled Italian villas.
+
+"I wanted to add a postscript," she interrupted. "That's only running
+true to form, isn't it? Here it is: If you ever at any time, because
+you are emotional and in many ways untried, find yourself unhappy and
+at cross purposes, and try to lean on a sentimental crutch which
+inclines in my direction--I shall leave this office just as they do in
+novels. And I shall not come back, which they always do in novels.
+This would deprive you of a good employee and myself of a good
+position and be foolish all round. You men are no different from us
+women; once a woman knows a man loves her she cannot quite hate him
+even if her heart is another's. Instinctively she labels him as a
+rainy-day proposition and during some wild thunderstorm--well, idiotic
+things happen! Whereas if she never knew he cared she might go about
+finding a mild mission in life. A man is the same; and since I have
+trusted you with my secret, and that secret happens to concern
+yourself, the logical consequence is that you will never quite hate me
+because I care. In some moods you might even try telling yourself that
+you cared, too. Then I should not only leave your employ but I should
+stop caring."
+
+She went on with the morning's mail. Outside, the office force was
+stirring. Raps at the door and phone calls would soon begin.
+
+"Would you really?" he asked, so soberly that Mary's hands trembled
+and she blotted ink on her clean desk pad as she tried to make a
+memorandum.
+
+"Really. I never can bring myself to believe in warmed-over magic."
+
+"Then I shall never have any such moods."
+
+He answered a phone call and there fell upon the office an atmosphere
+of strange peace which had been missing for many months.
+
+During the winter the rift between Steve and Beatrice became
+noticeable even to the Gorgeous Girl's friends, to Trudy's infinite
+delight; and by the time spring came it was an accepted thing that
+Steve's share in the scheme of things was to write checks and occupy
+as little space as possible in the apartment, whereas Beatrice's part
+in the scheme of things was to badger and nag at her husband eternally
+or be frigidly polite and civil, which was far harder to endure than
+her temper.
+
+The Gorgeous Girl's endeavours to become an advanced woman, an
+intellectual patroness and so on, were amusing and ineffectual. She
+soon found neither pleasure nor satisfaction in any of her near-lions.
+Nor did she succeed in making them roar. Whether it was a parlour
+lecture on Did a Chinese Monk Visit America a Thousand Years before
+Columbus? or a Baby Party at which Beatrice and Gay dressed as twins
+and were wheeled about in a white pram by Trudy, dressed as a French
+_bonne_--the reaction was one of depression and defeat. Though
+Beatrice still had her name printed on the reports of charity
+committees she no longer took what was termed an active part. She
+shrugged her shoulders carelessly and gave the reason that it was all
+so hopeless--and no fun at all.
+
+Inanimate things afforded the most satisfaction; at least she could
+buy an individual breakfast service costing a thousand dollars and
+have the item recorded in all the fashion journals, with her
+photograph, and she could have the most unique dinner favours and the
+smartest frocks, and they never disappointed her.
+
+Besides, the Italian villa was to be finished shortly and that would
+necessitate a new round of entertainments and minor adjustments and no
+end of enviable publicity and comment. This diversion would take her
+through the late spring and summer, and in the fall she fully intended
+to take up dress reform and become a feminist. She had an idea of
+wearing nothing but draped Grecian robes--which could be made to look
+quite fetching if one had enough jewellery to punctuate the
+drapes--and of going in for barefoot dancing on the lawn. It would be
+more convenient if she could persuade her father and aunt not to stay
+on at the Villa Rosa, as it was to be called. And certainly it would
+have been more æsthetic to look across the street and see something
+besides another expensive and hopelessly mediocre brick house which
+another rich man somewhat after Constantine's own heart had built with
+pride and joy. She wished she had bought a site back from the town and
+created a real estate. The fact that she had not done so made her
+miserable for over a week, during which Gay consoled her in most
+flattering fashion, neglecting his own wife to do so.
+
+Well, after the Villa Rosa--what then? Life seemed very empty. With a
+certain natural squareness of nature Beatrice was not the sort of
+woman to indulge in unwise affairs beyond a certain discreet point.
+She had never learned how to study, so she could not become a devotee
+of some fascinating and exacting subject. Her really keen mind had
+merely skimmed through her studies.
+
+Nor was she over fond of children. As she told Trudy, children were
+absorbing things and goodness knew if she ever had any of her own she
+would have a wonderful enough nursery and sun parlour with panels
+designed by a child psychologist; there was everything in first
+impressions. But take care of one of them? The actual responsibility?
+Heavens, what a fate! She would engage a trained baby nurse--and then
+drop in at the nursery for a few moments each day to see that
+everything was going well.
+
+Later, after the trying first years, she would be very proud of her
+children. Besides, planning children's clothes was a great deal of
+fun; and if she had a daughter she would see that the daughter
+married properly. Whether or not she was thinking of Steve, Trudy did
+not dare to ask; but she evidently was, as she added that one might
+better marry an impoverished nobleman and live in an atmosphere of
+culture and smart society than marry someone who never attempted to be
+anything.
+
+A child demanded of one intelligence up to a certain point, and
+faithful service, but it did not require keen intellect. A primitive
+knowledge of what their hurt or hunger or plain-temper cry meant--and
+a primitive tender fashion of coping with whichever it might be--were
+all that young babies demanded; and hence the Gorgeous Girl, like all
+finely bred and thoroughly selfish women of to-day who are bent on
+psychological nursery panels, refused to be tied down to the narrow
+routine of a nursemaid, as she called it. Love-gardening is the title
+old-fashioned gentlewomen originated.
+
+Then Beatrice cited how carefree Jill Briggs was with her four
+children. Goodness knew that Jill was always within hailing distance
+of the big time; and except for a few little illnesses and the
+fact that the oldest boy had died of croup the children were a
+complete success and perfect darlings, and Jill dressed them like
+old-style portraits. Besides, Jill had tried out a new system of
+education on the oldest boy; he had been taught to develop his
+individuality to the highest possible degree. At eight, just before
+the croup attack--though he did not know his alphabet or how to tell
+time and had never been cuddled or rocked to sleep with nursery
+jingles as soothing mental food--he could play quite a shrewd game of
+poker and drive a bug roadster. Beatrice, in talking over the child
+problem with Trudy, decided that if she ever had a son she, too,
+would develop the poker shark in him rather than the admirer of
+Santa Claus and the student of Mother Goose.
+
+"Of course Steve thinks a woman should drudge and slave over those
+crying mites as if the nation depended upon it," she concluded, "but I
+should never pay any attention to him. He said, in front of Jill, that
+he always felt well acquainted with rich children, for he had passed a
+similar childhood--meaning that living in an orphan asylum and being
+brought up by a nursemaid were much the same thing. Quite lovely of
+him, wasn't it?"
+
+Trudy could not suppress her giggle.
+
+"I'm sure the children get on well enough. Just think, if you had to
+plan all the meals and dress and undress them and all the baths--ugh,
+I never could! And when Steve begins his eloquent stories about these
+nursemaids who neglect children or dope them or do something dreadful
+I simply leave the room. He actually told Mrs. Ostrander that he saw
+her nurse slap her child across the face, and proceeded to add: 'It is
+never fair to strike a child that way. It breeds bad things in him.
+And he wasn't doing anything; it was just nurse's day for nerves.' Of
+course the Ostranders will never forget it. Now, Mrs. Ostrander is a
+member of the Mothers' Council, and a dear. She just slaved over her
+children's nursery and she reads all their books before she allows the
+nurse to read them aloud. I'm sure no children were ever brought up as
+scientifically; they have a wonderful schedule. She told me she had
+never held them except when they were having their pictures
+made--never!--and that crying strengthens the lungs. Of course Steve
+says we feed our lap dogs when they whine but close the door on the
+baby when he tries it. So what can you do with such a person?"
+
+To which Trudy agreed. Trudy agreed to anything Beatrice might say
+until the bills for the villa were settled and the O'Valleys
+established in the gondola-endowed home. Trudy sometimes pinched
+herself to realize that in such a short space of time she was living
+in the Touraine apartment house and that her husband, whom she loathed
+more each day, had actually scrambled into the position of being the
+best decorator in Hanover and was busy splitting commissions and
+wheedling orders from New York art dealers and Hanover's social set.
+
+Sometimes Nature takes her own methods of revenge, and to Mark
+Constantine's child she saw fit to send no son or daughter.
+Constantine never mentioned his hunger for grandchildren. He had a
+strange shyness about admitting the desire and the plans he had made
+for them. But when he saw the completion of this villa and realized
+the thousands of dollars squandered upon it and the impossible
+existence his daughter would lead living therein he went to his
+untouched plain room, looking out on sunken gardens, to try to figure
+out how this had all come about.
+
+He fumbled in mental chaos as to the meaning of all this nonsense and
+longed more than ever for a grandchild, someone who should be quite
+unspoiled and who would not approach him with light, begrudged kisses
+and a request for money.
+
+The formal Venetian ball which Beatrice gave to open her new home
+merely amused Steve, who had really dreaded it with the hysteria of a
+schoolgirl. He hated the whole scheme of the house and the man who
+was reaping a rich harvest by engaging the army of persons who had
+done the work therein. He rejoiced openly at each delay on the part of
+the plumber, the tinsmith, the decorator; and openly gave a
+thanksgiving when the illustrated wall paper for the halls, which told
+the legend of Psyche and Cupid, had been sent to Davy Jones's locker
+en route from Florence. Steve's name for the Villa Rosa was the Fuller
+Gloom.
+
+But when they did move into the new-old home and Steve was led through
+each room of gammon and spinach, as he had faintly whispered to Mary
+Faithful, he found himself only amused. Now that he considered it, it
+was a relief to know Beatrice had such a new and absorbing plaything
+to take up her time and keep her aloof from his personal affairs. He
+sought out his father-in-law in his plain room with its walnut set and
+stand of detective stories, and sat down in relief, though the two men
+honourably refrained from criticizing a certain person openly.
+
+At the ball Beatrice appeared in a wonderful black gown, so wonderful
+and expensive that its creator had given it a distinct title--The
+Plume. Steve did his duty as a handsome figurehead, as someone called
+him; after which he was free to stroll in the gardens and smoke and
+wonder what manner of folks inhabited the stars.
+
+An inspection of the house had taken place with Beatrice and Gay
+leading the procession, and Aunt Belle bringing up the rear. The oh's
+and ah's and exclamations of approval, resultant of fairy cocktails,
+rewarded Beatrice for her expenditure. When she brought them into her
+own apartment she stood back, while Gay lisped out the story of the
+greatest achievement and novelty of the entire house, watching the
+faces of her guests so as to catch the first expression of envy which
+should reveal itself.
+
+The novelty consisted in the set of bedroom furniture, which, though
+the rest of the house was Italian, as Gay hastily explained, was of
+Chinese workmanship, carved and inlaid in intricate design--two
+dragons fighting over pearls, with the various stages of the struggle
+represented on the bed legs, the bureau drawers, the easy-chair, the
+dressing table, and so on. The set had been made for the Emperor of
+China, but when his private council inspected it, it was found that
+one of the carved dragons on top of the four-poster bed had captured
+the pearl for which they had been fighting in sixty-seven or so other
+carvings. This signified bad luck for the emperor; misfortune and
+rebellion would be his lot if he slept in the bed. Though regretting
+the loss of the furniture the emperor felt the loss of his kingdom
+would be even greater, and the furniture was placed on the market. To
+Mrs. Stephen O'Valley was awarded the ownership as well as the
+privilege of writing the check that made the purchase possible. On the
+bed was a pillow of the material woven for emperors only, thrown in on
+account of the ill luck that would attend him who slept in the bed
+beneath the conquering dragon; and on a carved bone platter was an
+antique Maltese shawl which gave a rare note to the entire room.
+
+Steve, who had regarded the emperor's rejected furniture as a cross
+between a joke and an outrage, gave way to his feelings by pacing up
+and down the hall and capturing a tray of sandwiches being carried to
+the supper room. But Beatrice, after Gay's speech, felt a rare
+joy--for every guest in the room hated her for having won the prize.
+What more could she ask by way of reward?
+
+When they were alone in the new-old home Steve felt it only decent to
+congratulate her. Somehow he had come to feel that keeping up sham
+courtesies made everything easier.
+
+"You have worked very hard, haven't you?" he asked. "But you have
+wonderful results."
+
+"Do you think so? Everyone hates me now, for there will never be
+another royal bedroom set like mine on the market--when you think that
+Gay skirmished about and won it for me, it is quite remarkable. And it
+shows what Gay can do when he has a little encouragement. Alice Twill
+was almost cross-eyed and crying; her husband nipped the château idea
+in the bud. New York men are coming here to take photographs next
+week. I wish the garden were in better shape. They are going to run
+feature stories about it.... Oh, Steve, do you think of any new place
+to go this summer?"
+
+"I thought we had just moved to Venice," he said, still dazed at the
+amount of carved fire screens, tapestries, dim, impractical
+candlelights, and soft-eyed Madonnas which smiled at him on all
+sides.
+
+"I must have all the office force come and see this--it would be such
+a treat. And we can serve tea on the lawn."
+
+"Do. They don't often take time to go to museums."
+
+Steve's bad nature was getting the better of polite resolves. He was
+thinking of Mary's clear, witty eyes as she would view the remains of
+a plain American house.
+
+The next thing of interest to keep Beatrice at home was the advent of
+a real lion cub, following Monster's departure to canine heaven. Being
+too impossible of shape and disposition for any one's pride or
+comfort, Monster was disposed of and buried in a satin-lined coffin
+with a neat white headstone telling salient facts of her short
+existence.
+
+While Steve was giving devout thanks for the event Beatrice was
+realizing that the gardens needed a dominating note, as Gay said.
+During her reading of old fables and romantic legends about superwomen
+or extremely wicked matrons she had discovered that they nearly all
+possessed a lion or a bear or a brace of elephants to gambol on the
+green. Such a pet symbolized its owner's power and fearlessness, and
+any young woman who could have the Emperor of China's bedroom suite
+brought post haste into Hanover, U. S. A., was surely entitled to
+something in the jungle line for her front yard!
+
+For the first time in his daughter's life Mark Constantine made a
+faint protest, suggesting that she have a taxidermist mount several
+lion cubs and group them about the hall--while Steve sat back in
+cynical amusement and asked if she were going to request the goldfish
+to step aside in favour of a few Alaska seals?
+
+"If she gets a live lion--and she will, because I'm writing to a
+circus man now," Gay told Trudy--"I'm going to sprain my ankle and be
+laid up from the day the beast arrives until he goes--he won't tarry
+long, the police won't have it. But I'm not going to take any chances.
+Still, it would never do to make a fat commission on the deal and then
+act as if I were afraid to come over and play cannibal with him. I
+guess you can go," he added, insolently.
+
+Trudy looked at him in scorn. "You are cheap," she said. "Well, I will
+go! I'd just as soon be eaten by a lion as to have to live with a
+shrimp."
+
+The lion arrived in due time and was named Tawny Adonis. Beatrice
+considered him a perfect love. He was a gay young cub and quite
+effective in the new background, well intentioned but lonesome for his
+old atmosphere of circus life and his mother and brothers. He was
+given a large run in the Constantine grounds, and while Aunt Belle
+stayed locked in her room the greater share of the time and Gay
+immediately sprained his ankle and was forced to send Trudy as his
+messenger, Mark Constantine and Steve found their time well occupied
+in convincing the authorities that the town infantry would not be
+devoured piecemeal. Hanover had never really approved of having an
+Italian villa crammed down its throat, and it was certainly not
+agreeable, to say the least, to have a lion cub at large as a
+dominating garden note.
+
+"You cannot keep him, even if you pulled all his teeth and taught him
+to be a dope fiend," Steve said in desperation after the roars of
+Tawny Adonis had been reported to the police as annoying. "He is
+growing bigger every day and all he has done is demolish flowers and
+shrubs and chew up fence posts. I'm sorry for him, and I'm not
+particularly afraid of him, but if there was an accident with a child
+even the owner of a dominating garden note could not expect to go
+scot-free."
+
+Her father and her friends championed Steve's stand in the matter and
+after a little rebelling and pouting and having the pleasure of
+seeing her name in all the papers as the owner of the lion cub and so
+on, Beatrice consented to part with him on the condition that she be
+allowed to give him a farewell birthday party, he being nearly a year
+old. She was going to ask the children of all her friends. But getting
+a hint of the event her friends hastily arranged a Tom Thumb wedding
+for charity, and then assured Beatrice it was merely a coincidence
+that the two things interfered with each other, wasn't it a shame?
+Realizing that this dominating note was not a social asset Beatrice
+hastily sided in with her father and the authorities.
+
+Besides, she was tired of Tawny Adonis; he was destructive, and a
+secret source of worry if she could have been made to admit it. So she
+prepared for a birthday fête and determined to have the public-school
+children as the guests. But these refused her invitation as well; so
+she went into the slums and collected thirty harmless waifs who felt
+that a lion's birthday party was not to be despised, and brought them
+triumphantly into the Italian gardens.
+
+The waifs gathered round an outdoor table, too busy swallowing food to
+bother about their possible and likely fate. In the centre of the
+table was a huge birthday cake for Tawny Adonis. It was made of raw
+hamburger steak, generously iced with bone marrow, and the single
+anniversary candle took the form of a balanced soup bone. After the
+children had eaten their fill Tawny Adonis was let loose upon the
+scene and at the birthday cake, and during the wild smashing of glass
+and china and the excited shrieks of the waifs Tawny went to the
+birthday cake and devoured it, soup bone and all.
+
+Gay was out of town the day of the party but Trudy bravely assisted,
+as did one or two others, Mark Constantine and his sister sitting in
+the windows to watch the procedure while Beatrice in a gown of
+turquoise velvet with a coronet of frosted leaves played Lady
+Bountiful and dismissed the slum brigade as soon as possible, sending
+them home with the confused knowledge that a beautiful lady in angel
+clothes and a wild animal sometimes meant plenty of ham sandwiches and
+ice cream, as well as the opportunity to slip a fork into one's
+pocket.
+
+Steve declined to take any part in the celebration, but at the
+conclusion of the event he appeared with policemen and a patrol wagon
+containing a cage, and amid gay farewells and grim coaxings Tawny
+Adonis was escorted to the railway station and shipped back to the
+circus man, at a loss of five hundred dollars--not counting the damage
+done--to the Gorgeous Girl!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Trudy was keen as a brier whenever her own realm was threatened. With
+the shrewdness which caused her to refrain from ever speaking ill of a
+woman when talking to a man and never speaking aught but ill of women
+when talking to their own kind, she foresaw in Gay's constant
+attendance on the Gorgeous Girl the possibility of an unpleasant
+situation.
+
+For the Gorgeous Girl had said not only to her husband but to her
+friends that she must find some other kind of a good time now the
+novelty of the Villa Rosa was exhausted. Even inky people bored her,
+she added; poets were no longer permitted in her drawing room, and the
+circle of pet robins and angel ducks had somehow wandered out of her
+safe keeping. An unusually pretty flock of sweetsome débutantes had
+thinned the bachelor ranks, and Jill Briggs's youngest boy died of
+some childish ailment, disturbing Beatrice more than she admitted, for
+some reason, and making her own thoughts poor company.
+
+It was while she was talking of this child's death with Trudy that the
+latter glimpsed the handwriting on the wall, and with scantily
+concealed enmity determined to beat Beatrice at her own game.
+
+"Jill is going away for the winter, poor thing," Beatrice said. "I
+don't blame her; it would be too horrible to have to stay and see all
+his things about. And it's the second child she's lost. Goodness me,
+she has spent hundreds on baby specialists and nurses! Well, you know
+yourself, Trudy--you've seen how wonderful she has been. This boy's
+death has so distressed her that she has decided to have two nurses
+stay with the children instead of one. Mighty sweet of her, as it all
+comes out of Jill's pocketbook and not her husband's. She says she
+cannot think of leaving them with one person, and she must go away
+because her nerves are frazzled.
+
+"She is going to the West Indies with an artist friend, and they are
+going to make a marvellous collection of water-colour paintings of
+birds and flowers, a sort of memorial to the boy. Jill says she will
+sell them and give the proceeds for the _crèche_ charity. Well, that
+is all very well for Jill to do; she has a real heartache to live
+down. But when you have no earthly reason to go and paint wild birds
+and flowers and you are bored to distraction with everything--" She
+shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Meaning yourself?" asked Trudy. "Really?"--delighted that this was
+so.
+
+"Are you ever bored?"
+
+"Only enough to be fashionable. You see I have to live Gay's life and
+career and my own at the same time." Instinctively Trudy knew this
+caused envy in her hostess's heart for a multitude of reasons. "Gay
+never amounted to anything until we were married"--she paused for this
+to take full effect--"and I enjoy playing the game. I have grown fond
+of makeshifts and make-believes and hedging, bluffing, stalling,
+jumping mental hurdles--it's fun--it keeps you alive and never
+weighing more than a hundred and ten pounds."
+
+Trudy rose to go. She was a _chic_ little vixen in a fantastic
+costume of black velvet with a jacket of blush pink. No one but Trudy
+could have worn such a thing--a semi-Dick-Whittington effect--and have
+gotten away with it. Though she was physically very tired from sewing
+late the night before, and mal-nourished because she was too indolent
+to bother to cook, Trudy looked quite fit for a long stretch of hard
+running.
+
+"Why don't you diet seriously?" she purred. "It's only right for your
+true friends to tell you. The double chin is permanent, I'm afraid."
+She shook her shapely little head, to Beatrice's inward rage.
+
+As Beatrice sat looking up at this impertinent little person she
+suddenly became angered to think she had ever bothered with an
+ex-office girl or permitted Gaylord to coax her into being nice to his
+wife. And if this impossible person could bring Gaylord into the ranks
+of prosperity in a short time, making everyone accept her, what
+couldn't she, Beatrice O'Valley, do with Gay if she tried--seriously
+tried? He would not linger beside Trudy if Beatrice gave him to
+understand there was a place for him at her own hearth. She knew
+Gaylord too well; he suddenly assumed the figurative form of a goal,
+as she had once assumed to Steve--a play pastime--in the true sense. A
+real man would not play off property doll in the hands of any woman,
+not excepting his own wife; which Beatrice realized. Living with a
+cave man had taught her many things. Yet it would be rare fun to have
+a property doll all one's own, different from the impersonal, harmless
+herd of boys and poets, a really innocent pastime if you considered it
+in the eyes of man-written law. What a lark--to switch Gay from this
+cheap, red-haired little woman, dominate his life, suddenly assert
+her starved abilities, and make him become far greater than anything
+Trudy had ever been able to do! It would cause such a jolly row and
+excitement and pep everyone up. Pet and flatter him and show Trudy
+that after all she had only been an incompetent clerk in Steve's
+office!
+
+"Perhaps I will diet," was all she said, smiling sweetly. "And tell
+Gay he must come see me to-morrow. I have a plan that I want to tell
+him--and no one else. Besides, there is a flaw in the last pair of
+candlesticks he bought for me."
+
+Trudy realized perfectly well that sweetness from the lips of an obese
+lady, after one has assured her of the arrival of a double chin,
+always augurs ill for everyone.
+
+Originally Trudy had determined to use Gaylord as a stepping-stone, a
+rather satisfactory first husband. But since Beatrice's commission to
+do the villa and the stream of like orders from the new-rich who were
+trying to unload their war fortunes before they were caught at it,
+Trudy had grown content and even keen about Gaylord in an impersonal
+sense. She felt that she could not better herself if he continued to
+do as well as he had the last few months, and that she would continue
+to do her share of hill-climbing indefinitely. In other words, having
+won Gaylord in the remnant department, Trudy decided to keep him and
+make him answer the purpose of paying her board bill.
+
+Besides, though she admitted it only to Mary, she felt anything but
+well. The more money Gaylord made the more he spent on himself, and he
+seemed to expect Trudy to manage out of the ozone, yet to appear as
+the indulged wife of her enterprising young husband. It never
+ended--the eternal searching for bargains; dyeing clothes and mending,
+cleaning, and pressing; living on delicatessen food; sitting up nights
+to help out with the work, often doing odds and ends of sewing, and
+appearing the next afternoon in the customer's house to admire the
+effect of the new drapery and tell of the bright-eyed Italian woman
+who had done the work.
+
+Trudy saw little of Mary. Her better self made her stay aloof lest she
+win from her friend other details to add to her already safeguarded
+secret. And she never attempted to amuse Steve. She fought shy of him
+when he was about, wisely limiting herself to shy nods and smiles and
+occasionally a very meek compliment, which he usually pretended not to
+hear.
+
+As she walked home from the villa--Gay had the roadster--she told
+herself that she must watch out or Beatrice would attempt to spoil Gay
+to the extent of making him wish to be rid of his wife. She realized
+that Gay was extremely scornful and careless of her. Having married
+her and satisfied his one-cylinder brain that he was a deuce of a chap
+and a democratic rake in marrying this dashing nobody Gaylord turned
+bully and permitted Trudy to take the cares of the family on her
+shoulders. He was now enjoying the fruits of her industry with a fair
+credit rating, very different from formerly, a bank account of which
+Trudy knew nothing, and the congenial work of pussyfooting about
+boudoirs and guzzling tea while perched on Beatrice's blue-satin
+gondolas.
+
+He no longer needed Trudy. He could see now that to be single-handed
+once more, but with his new standing and profession, would be a most
+satisfactory state of affairs. In fact, if Trudy would only fall in
+love with a travelling man and decamp--what a chap he would soon rise
+to be! For a broken heart is often a man's strongest asset and a
+woman's gravest suspicion. Trudy, however, gave him no hope in this
+direction. She hung about her fireplace contrary to her former plans
+concerning it. She really put in an eighteen-hour day as both slavey
+and sylph, and seemed filled with everlasting patience and jazz.
+
+Coming into the Touraine apartment Trudy found Gaylord showing old
+prints to some woman customers and advising as to the smartness of
+having them framed and used in sun parlours or any intriguing
+little nook. Trudy was _de trop_--she was prettier than the
+prospective customers, but in their eyes she had only a Winter-Garden
+personality--and Gay frowned his welcome.
+
+Had Trudy not come in Gay would have served cocktails of his own
+making, which would cause them to order the prints at fabulous prices;
+and then sat in the dusk talking about the occult and the popularity
+of Persian pussy cats and how to make pear-and-cottage-cheese salad
+and serve it on cabbage leaves, which was quite the mode. It never
+does for an interior decorator, particularly if specializing in
+boudoirs, to have a wife, Gaylord decided as his customers patronized
+Trudy and departed, Gaylord seeing them to their car and standing
+bareheaded to wave his bejewelled hand as they whirled round the
+corner.
+
+He then returned to give Trudy his unbiassed opinion. "I thought you
+were going to stay away until evening," he said. "You spoiled the
+sale."
+
+"Did I? What were you about to do--play soul mate if they'd take the
+old things? I'm the one who found those prints in a second-hand store
+and had sense enough to buy the lot. I'm the one who found the
+remnants of cretonne you paste them on--and told you to charge ten
+dollars each--and I'm the one who sits out in the little back room and
+pastes them on, too!"
+
+She threw her purse down with an angry gesture.
+
+"You are the crudest thing," he said.
+
+"I slapped you once for calling me a crude little fool--and the next
+time you try it I'll do better than that!" She was unable to control
+her temper. "If you think being a bachelor and languishing in this
+place would keep you afloat you're mistaken. It's me--I'm the one that
+buys the bargains and runs the sewing machine half the night, sends
+out the bills and wheedles the salesmen into looking at you--to say
+nothing of doing the housekeeping, and keeping every good-looking
+woman afraid of me, yet polite. Why, if you were alone any real
+business man could come in here and start a shop and put you behind
+the bench overnight. You're nothing! You never were. You lived on a
+dead man's reputation until you married me, and now you're living on a
+redheaded girl's nerve. I'll scold as shrilly as I like. If the
+neighbours hear, all the better!"
+
+Trudy had lost control of herself. Besides, she was very tired. "Who
+told you to wear gray-velvet smocks in your drawing-room shop and to
+have soft ties poured down softer collars? You look a hundred per
+cent, better than when you hopped round in a check suit that gave you
+a gameboard appearance. I did that. If I'd ever worked for O'Valley as
+I have for you, thinking I'd get a good time out of it somehow, I'd
+have had Mary Faithful on the run."
+
+She did not add the rest of her ideas--that Beatrice O'Valley, not
+contented with her store of possessions and avenues of interests,
+contemplated playing property doll with this half-portion little snob
+who stood before her in his ridiculous smock costume, half afraid and
+half sneering.
+
+The interview concluded with Trudy's going to the kitchen for some
+kind of a supper and Gay's driving off post haste to see Beatrice.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Steve returned from his hurried two-day trip he asked Beatrice if
+she realized the amount of money she was spending.
+
+"Why should I?" she answered, aggrievedly. Steve looked unusually
+handsome this afternoon, and seemed to fit into the antique chair;
+and, in contrast to her contemplated property doll, Beatrice felt
+amiable and willing to play for favour. "I haven't asked you for one
+quarter of it."
+
+"That's the trouble--your father has gone on paying your bills, and
+you don't seem to realize I am not an enormously rich man--and never
+will be, abnormal business conditions having ceased. We are back where
+we started, so to speak, and I don't look for a time of unheralded
+prosperity for some days to come. I was figuring up while I was away,
+in detail; and here are the results." He handed her a memorandum. "You
+see? I earn a splendid living and I have a neat nest egg not to be
+despised. But I have no Italian-villa income. Your father has, so you
+came back to your father to take his money and I am merely a necessary
+accessory to the entire ensemble." His voice was bitter.
+
+"Oh, no, Stevuns!" She was quite the romantic parasite as she came and
+knelt beside him in coaxing attitude. "Why, papa wishes me to have
+everything I want. He would be terribly worried if he thought I had to
+do without a single shoe button!"
+
+"But must all the shoe buttons be of gold?" Steve interpolated.
+
+She paid no attention to him. "I'm papa's only heir--the money is all
+mine, anyway, and it always has been. You know how simple papa's
+tastes are."
+
+"Like my own--like those of all busy people who are doing things. We
+haven't time to pamper ourselves."
+
+"Someone has to buy up the trash! And you ought to thank us rich
+darlings of the gods for existing at all--we make you look so
+respectable by contrast." She waited for his answer.
+
+He rose and went over to the carved mantel, standing so he could look
+down the long room crowded with luxuries.
+
+"But this place isn't the home of an American man and his wife. It's a
+show place--bought with your father's money! And I've failed. I'm not
+supporting my wife. Good heavens, if I were I'd have to be cracking
+safes every week-end to do it. I can't make any more money than I am
+making--and stay at large--and you cannot go on living off your father
+and being my wife. I won't have it! I won't be that kind of a
+failure!"
+
+"What shall I do with the money, throw it to the birds?" Her head
+began to ache, as it always did when a serious conversation was at
+hand.
+
+"Wait until it is yours and then spend it on something for the
+good--not the delight--of someone else, or of a great many other
+people. Be my wife--let me take care of you," he begged, earnestly.
+
+Beatrice hesitated. "I couldn't," was her final answer. "I couldn't
+manage with the allowance you give me--don't worry, dearest, there's
+no reason at all that we shouldn't have as good a time as there is.
+Papa wants us to."
+
+"Don't you see what I'm trying to get at?" he insisted. "Won't you try
+to see? Just try--put yourself in my place, make yourself think with
+my viewpoint as a starting place. Suppose you had been a dreamer of a
+boy with a pirate's daring and a poet's unreal delusions, and you
+combined the two to produce a fortune, a fortune everyone marvelled
+at, the lucky turn of the wheel. Suppose you used that fortune with
+the same daring and fancy, loving someone with all your heart, to make
+money in a regular business and under the guidance of a well-trained
+merchant like your father--and then you married the person you loved
+and saw her deliberately belittle your manhood by going to her
+father's house to live, spending her father's money, and leaving you
+quite alone and without the joyous and needed responsibility of
+supporting your wife. Now what would you do?"
+
+"I'd start right in spending my own money for things I wanted," she
+decided, glibly.
+
+"But suppose you did not want things--cluttery, everlasting
+things, glaring, upholstered, painted, carved, what not--lugged
+from the four corners of the earth, not harmonizing with your own
+aims or interests? Suppose you wanted to create an individual and
+representative home and take care of it and the guardian angel who
+presided therein--then what would you do?"
+
+"Oh--you mean you want another style of house? Then let's buy a
+country tract--and I promise to let you build and furnish just as you
+wish. That's a bully idea, dear, to have an abrupt contrast to this
+house--old-English manor type would be wonderful!"
+
+The dinner gong brought a merciful release. Beatrice danced through
+the archway throwing him a kiss as the rest of her decision.
+
+It was at this identical moment that Steve concluded it was too late
+for his wife ever to develop anything more than a double chin or so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+During Beatrice's house party, at which twenty or so equally Gorgeous
+Girls and their husbands were quartered in the Villa Rosa, while a
+string orchestra danced them further along the road toward nervous
+prostration each night, a fire ignited in the offices of the O'Valley
+Leather Company.
+
+Steve's office and Mary's adjoining room were damaged by water rather
+than by the slight blaze itself and during an enforced recess from
+work both Mary and Steve found that a fire in an office building may
+cause a loss of time from routine yet be a great personal boon.
+
+The day following the accident, Steve having been summoned at midnight
+to view the flames, Mary came to the office to try to rescue the files
+and sweep aside the débris.
+
+"Nothing is really hurt, but they always mess things up," Steve said,
+coming to the doorway to hold up a precious record book. "See this? I
+wonder why they always leave such a lot of stuff to clear away. Now
+the whole extent of damage is the destroying of that rickety side
+stairway that is never used and could have been done away with long
+ago. Some boys, playing craps and smoking, left the makings of the
+fire and before it touched these rooms there was water poured into the
+whole plant. As a consequence, we have a three-day vacation and
+instead of having the side stairs torn down I'm in line for a chunk of
+insurance."
+
+"Even the tea isn't spilled from my caddy," Mary answered; "Look."
+
+"Wonder what they used this side stairway for? It was rickety when I
+bought the place." He looked at the blackened remains of steps.
+
+"I don't know," Mary answered, absent-mindedly. She could have added
+that whenever she looked at those stairs or their closed door she saw
+but one thing--Steve on his wedding day as he came stealing up to ask
+about the long-distance telephone call, aglow with happiness and
+dreams. For her own reasons, therefore, Mary did not regret the
+destruction of the side stairs.
+
+"They've shoved this cabinet over as if they had a special antagonism
+to it," he was saying, righting a small piece of furniture containing
+mostly Mary's papers. "There--not hurt, is it? Do the drawers open?"
+He began pulling them out, one after another. The last refused to
+open.
+
+"What's in this one--it blocks the spring?"
+
+Mary tried her hand at it. "Something wedged right at the edge. I'm
+sure I don't see what it can be. I never used that drawer for anything
+but----"
+
+At their combined jerk the drawer came flying into space, and with it
+the remains of a white cardboard box with the monograms of B. C. and
+S. O. entwined by means of a cupid and a tiny wreath of flowers. Dried
+cake crumbs lay in the bottom of the drawer. It was the Gorgeous
+Girl's box of wedding cake which Mary Faithful had found on her desk.
+
+Neither spoke immediately. Finally Mary said: "I suppose that's as bad
+an omen as to break a mirror under a ladder on Friday the thirteenth.
+Now shall I have the men sweep the office out? There is no reason we
+cannot get to work to-morrow."
+
+"Wait a moment about sweeping out offices and going to work," Steve
+insisted. "If you want to break the hoodoo you have just brought on
+yourself by smashing up wedding cake--let me talk and act as high
+priest."
+
+She shook her head. "You promised, and you've been true-blue--don't
+spoil it. Besides, it can do no good."
+
+"I want to ask a question," he insisted. "I'm not going to break faith
+with you or take advantage of knowing what you told me. I shall always
+try to appreciate the honour done me, no matter if I am unworthy. I
+want to ask a question in as impersonal a way as if I wrote in to a
+woman's column." He tried to laugh.
+
+"Ask away." Mary sat down in the nearest chair, the broken cardboard
+box at her feet.
+
+"Why is it that a man can honestly be in love with the woman he
+marries and yet in an amazingly short time find himself playing the
+cad in feeling disappointed, discontented, utterly lacking affection?
+It's a ghastly happening. Why is it he saw no handwriting on the wall?
+I am not stupid, Mary, neither am I given to inconstancy--I've had to
+struggle too much not to have my mind made up once and for all time.
+Why didn't I see through this veneer of a good time that these
+Gorgeous Girls manage to have painted over their real selves? Why did
+I never suspect? And what is a man to do when he discovers the
+disillusionment? You see it all, there's no sense in not admitting
+it--why do I find myself ill at ease, now tense, now irritable over
+trifles, now sulky, despondent--as plainly sulky and despondent as a
+wild animal successfully caged and labelled, which must perforce stay
+put yet which will not afford its spectators the satisfaction of
+walking wistfully from cage corner to cage corner and yowling in
+unanswered anguish!"
+
+"Is it as bad as that?" she asked, softly.
+
+He nodded as he continued: "I sometimes feel the way the monkish
+fraternity did at Oxford when they claimed 'they banished God and
+admitted women.' I want a man-made world, womanless, without a single
+trace of romance or a good time. Not right, is it? Sometimes I think
+I'll crack under the pretense, go raving mad and scream out the whole
+miserable sham under which I live--and every time I indulge myself in
+such a reverie I find myself writing Beatrice an extra check and going
+with her to this thing or that, steel-hammer pulses beating at my
+forehead and a languor about even the attempt at breathing."
+
+Mary would have spoken but he rushed ahead: "I like this fire, this
+debris. Most people would curse at it--it's real and rather common,
+sort of plain boiled-dinner variety. It gives me an excuse to take
+time off from the eternal frolic. I'm glad when there's a strike or a
+row and I dig out of town to stay in a commercial hotel. I have to get
+away from the whole tinsel show. And yet it was what I wanted, was
+willing to play modern Faust to any Wall Street Mephistopheles----"
+
+"And you are sure it wasn't a Mephistopheles?"
+
+"Of course not--for that much I can draw a deep breath and give
+thanks--it was my own luck."
+
+"Other times, other titles," she murmured.
+
+"One time you told me what you thought of the future of American
+women, the all-round good fellows of the world--do you remember? I
+wish you had not told me. It's just another thing to irritate. I'm
+driven mad by trifles--I'm starved for a big tragedy; that's the way
+this craving for a fortune and a good time is playing boomerang. I'm
+so infernally weary of hearing about the cut-glass slipper heels of
+some chorus girl and so hungry to hear about a shipwreck, a new creed,
+a daring crime that----"
+
+"You foolish, funny boy," she said, taking pity on his involved
+analysis, "don't you see what you have done? It's quite the common
+fate of get-rich-quick dreamers; you merely symbolized your goal by
+Beatrice Constantine, she stood for the combined relationships of
+wife, comrade, lady luxury--and you captured your goal, and the
+greater effort ceased. You have had time to examine your prize in
+microscopic fashion. It isn't at all what you intended--but it is
+quite what you deserve. No one can make a lie serve for the truth--at
+all times and for an indefinite period. There is bound to come a
+cropper somewhere--usually where you least expect it. And you lied to
+yourself in the beginning, a passive sort of falsehood, in merely
+refusing to see the truth and groping for the unreal. You had to
+justify your race for wealth, so you said, 'Oho, I'll love a
+story-book princess and let that be my incentive. Story-book
+princesses are expensive lovelies and you have to have money bags to
+jingle before their fair selves!' So you became more and more
+infatuated with the fairy-book princess who happened to be in your
+pathway--and it was Beatrice. She made you feel that anything your
+slightly mad and quite unrealizing young self might do was proper.
+Just as the boy with a new air rifle deliberately sets up a target to
+shoot away at because the savage in him must justify hitting something
+besides the ozone, so you have merely wooed and won your own falsehood
+and disillusionment."
+
+"You say it rather neatly; but that isn't all. The thing is that I'm
+not game enough to go on and take the punishment. Are you surprised?"
+
+"No. But are you prepared to give up the thing which won her?"
+
+"My money? I've thought of it." He folded his arms and began walking
+up and down the littered, water-soaked office. "Would you like me any
+better?" he asked, tenderly.
+
+Mary's eyes grew stormy. "If the men go to work at once we can have
+the rugs sent to the cleaner's and put down old matting for a
+temporary covering--and I can go ahead taking inventory," was her
+answer.
+
+"I see," Steve made himself respond. "Well--I didn't trespass very
+much," he whispered as he passed her to leave the building.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Beatrice regarded the fire as an amusing happening and before Steve
+realized what was being done she had proposed that Gaylord refurnish
+the office in an arts-and-crafts fashion. It had long seemed to her a
+most inartistic and clumsy place and when Steve refused her offer and
+told her that a splint-bottomed chair and a kitchen chair were his
+office equipment some years ago she sent for Gaylord on her own
+initiative and told him to beard the lion in the den to see if he
+could win Steve to the cause of painted wall panels typifying
+commerce, industry, and such, and crippled beer steins and so on as
+artistic wastebaskets.
+
+There had never been an active feud between Gaylord and Steve; it was
+always that hidden enmity of a weak culprit toward a strong man.
+Neither had Trudy been able to win Steve by her Titian curls,
+baby-blue eyes, and obese compliments. In fact, Gaylord had avoided
+Steve the last year. He was the one Beatrice called upon to play with
+her, he accompanied her shopping, even unto the milliner's, and had
+been in New York one time when Beatrice had gone down to see about
+buying a moleskin wrap. Not even Trudy knew that he had actually
+adopted a monocle and squired Beatrice round in state.
+
+So he approached Steve with the attitude of "I hate you and am only
+waiting to prove it but meanwhile I'll play off the friend lizard no
+matter how painful."
+
+But after a few "my dear fellows" and "old dears" and gibes about the
+disordered office with its prosaic chairs and Mary Faithful, quite
+flushed and plain looking as she dashed round giving orders, Gaylord
+found himself being neatly set outside on the curbstone and told to
+remain in that exact position.
+
+"I hate this decorating business," Steve said in final condemnation.
+"I agree with my father-in-law that when a man approaches me with a
+book of sample braids and cretonnes under his arm I feel it only
+righteous that he be shot at sunrise--and now you know how strong you
+stand with me. I don't mind Beatrice having her whirl at the thing. A
+new colour scheme as often as she has a manicure; that's different.
+But my office stays as I wish it and you can't rush in any globes of
+goldfish and inkstands composed of reclining young females with their
+little hands forming the ink cup, while a single spray of cherry
+blossoms flourishes over the hook I hang my hat and coat upon. Oh, no,
+trot back to your boudoirs and purr your prettiest, but stop trying to
+tackle real men."
+
+Gaylord's one-cylinder brain had become more efficient by dint of
+daily sparring with his wife. So he retorted: "She is going to make
+you a present of it--your birthday gift, I understand. Does that alter
+the case?"
+
+Steve looked at him with an even wilder frown. "Tell her to build a
+bomb-proof pergola for herself and mark it for me just the same. When
+we redecorate round here it takes Miss Faithful about a half hour to
+plan the show. Good-bye, Gay, I'm awfully rushed. Thanks just as
+much."
+
+Gaylord sauntered outside, smiling, apparently as if he accepted the
+entire universe. But his one-cylinder brain harboured an unpleasant
+secret which concerned Steve. Gaylord knew that Steve had not reckoned
+with his enemies and that he was in no condition to begin doing so
+now. Constantine was no longer at the helm, fearless, respected, and
+dominating. Steve was quite the reckless egotist, out of love with his
+wife, mentally jaded, and weary of the game--and his enemies surmised
+all this in rough fashion and were making their plans accordingly. How
+wonderful it would be if certain catastrophes did happen. How lucky
+Beatrice had her own income! She would never cease ordering bomb-proof
+pergolas or bird cages carved from rare woods.
+
+The next day--before Beatrice and Steve had a chance to argue the
+matter out to a fine point--Mark Constantine had a stroke. It was like
+the sudden crashing down of a great oak tree which within had been
+hollow and decayed for some time but to all exterior appearances quite
+the sturdy monarch. Without warning he became first a mighty thing
+lying day after day on a bed, fussed over and exclaimed over and
+prayed over by a multitude of people. Then he assumed the new and
+final proportions of a childish invalid--his fierce, true grasp of
+things, his wide-sweeping and ambitious viewpoint narrowed hastily to
+the four walls of the sick room. Instead of the stock-market
+fluctuation bringing forth his "Gad, that's good!" or oaths of
+disapproval, the taste of an especially good custard or the way the
+masseuse neglected his left forearm were cause for joy or grief.
+
+Life had suddenly changed into the monotonous and wearing routine of a
+broken, lonesome old man who had plenty of time to think of the past
+with his wife Hannah, recalling incidents he had not recalled until
+this dull, long day arrived. And after reaching many conclusions about
+many things Constantine was forced to realize that no one particularly
+cared for or sought out his opinions. He was placed in the category of
+all fallen oaks--someone who would have one of the largest funerals
+ever held in the city. And friends murmured that for Bea's sake they
+hoped it would not be long.
+
+But it was to be long--for with the tenacity of purpose he had always
+exhibited Constantine readjusted himself to the narrow realm of four
+walls. His former tyranny toward the business world was now exercised
+toward his daughter and son-in-law, his sister and his attendants. He
+resolved to live--or exist--just as long as life was possible, to
+vampire-borrow from those about him all the vitality that he could, to
+have every care and comfort and every new doctor ever heard of called
+in to attend him; he now said he wished to live as many years as God
+willed. There was a God, now that he was partially paralyzed, a very
+real God, to whom he prayed in orthodox fashion. He wanted to keep
+remembering the past with Hannah, to shed the tears for her death
+which he had never taken the time to shed, to decide what it was that
+had been so wrong in his life in order that his death and hereafter
+might be very properly right.
+
+Aunt Belle had taken this new affliction after the fashion of a Mrs.
+Gummidge. It affected her worse than any one else, first because the
+ridicule and fault-finding to which her brother had always treated her
+were tripled in their amount and quality, and yet as she was dependent
+upon this childishly weak brother she must endure the treatment.
+Secondly, she was reminded that her age was somewhat near Mark
+Constantine's age and perhaps a similar fate lay in store for her.
+Lastly, it tied her down--propriety demanded that someone be in the
+sick room a share of the time and certainly Beatrice had no intention
+of undertaking the responsibility.
+
+Steve had acted as Aunt Belle fancied he would act, genuinely
+concerned over the catastrophe and seeking refuge with this tired old
+child a greater share of the time. By degrees Aunt Belle left Steve to
+play the role of comforter and companion, since no nurse ever stayed
+at the Constantine bedside for longer than a fortnight. So she was
+allowed to gambol about in her pinafore frocks and high-heeled shoes,
+wondering if her brother had made a fair will, taking into account the
+fact that a woman is only as old as she looks--and with a tidy fortune
+who knows what might happen after the proper mourning period?
+
+Beatrice had been prostrated at the news. For two days she stayed in
+bed and sobbed hysterically. Then she was prevailed upon to see her
+father and to take the sensible attitude of preparing for a long
+siege, as Steve suggested.
+
+"How cold-hearted it sounds--a long siege!" she reproached.
+
+"But it is true. He will not die--he will live until that splendid
+vitality of his has been snuffed out by a careless law of rhythm, so
+you may as well buck up and run in to see him every day and then go
+about as usual."
+
+"A sick room drives me wild. I wish I had taken a course in practical
+nursing instead of the domestic-science things."
+
+Steve did not answer.
+
+"I can't bear to think of it. It's like having life-in-death in the
+very house. Oh, Steve, can't you talk him into going to a sanitarium?
+They'd have so many interesting kinds of baths to try!"
+
+"He won't mind your parties, if that is what is bothering you. The
+only thing he asks is to be left in peace in his room with plenty of
+detective stories and plenty of medical attention, and he won't know
+if you dance the roof off. But if you really want to hasten the end
+send Gay up there with plans for remodelling his room--it will either
+kill or cure," he laughed.
+
+"I must do something to help me forget and make it easier for him,"
+she said, soberly. "I'm going to try a faith healer--not because I
+believe in them but because I don't want to leave any stone unturned.
+I think a new interest would help papa. Would you try adopting a child
+or my taking up classical dancing in deadly earnest?" She was quite
+sincere and emotionally wrought up as she came up to him and laid her
+head on his shoulder.
+
+"Oh, I'd take up classical dancing," he advised.
+
+She gave a sigh of relief. "Yes, it's what I really think would be the
+best. I will dance on the lawn so papa can watch me."
+
+He gave vent to his father-in-law's favourite expletive, "Gad!" under
+his breath.
+
+He did not add what was an unpleasant probability: that, having to
+assume full responsibility of affairs, there were likely to be
+astonishing complications. Crashed-down oak trees are quite helpless
+concerning their enemies, reckoned upon or otherwise, and Steve, who
+had never taken count of his foes, would be called upon to meet them
+all single-handed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+In a jewellery store Trudy Vondeplosshe, wrapped in wine-coloured
+velours, was coquetting with diamond rings under glass and trying to
+affect an air of indifference concerning them. With all her husband's
+rise in the world he did not see fit to bestow upon his wife any
+substantial token of his regard. The vague and transitory idea he once
+entertained of playing off fairy godfather to her and placing a
+fortune at her feet had become past history. Now that Gay did run a
+motor and wear monogrammed silk shirts he saw to it that Trudy had as
+little as the law allowed. She still continued remaking her dresses
+and haunting remnant counters, sewing on Gay's work, playing off the
+same overstrained, underfed Trudy as in the first days at the
+Graystone apartment. But as it was for a good time she never thought
+of faltering.
+
+She had decided, however, that it was time now to adopt other and more
+forceful methods of obtaining the things she craved and felt she had
+earned. Foremost, as with many women, was a diamond ring. After
+obtaining this she would turn in her wedding ring for old gold, the
+price to apply on a platinum circlet studded with brilliants. For
+months Trudy's eyes had glittered greedily as she observed Gay's
+clientele with their jewelled bags, rings, brooches, watches, and what
+not--yet she possessed not a single gem.
+
+She had often enough asked Gay for one, to which he would sneer: "What
+do you want with a diamond? You know I'm always on the ragged edge of
+failing!"
+
+"Because you gamble and drink and are a born fool," she protested.
+"You could make real money if you would listen to me and keep quiet."
+
+"I can't see what that has to do with your wanting a diamond ring! If
+I ever make real money you can have one but not when auto tires are as
+high as they are----"
+
+"And when husbands grow tipsy and drive into ditches and have to be
+brought home by horses and wagons. Oh, no. But you'll go shopping with
+Beatrice and pick out her jewellery and tell her jewels have souls and
+a lot more bunk, and then get a commission as soon as her back is
+turned! Why don't you get me a diamond instead, and omit the bunk?
+I'll take one with a flaw--I'm used to seconds. You must believe me
+when I say that, because I married you."
+
+Gay no longer feared Trudy; in fact, he felt he had little use for
+her. She was an obstacle to his making an excellent marriage. Through
+Trudy and all the rest of the complicated ladder climbing he was now
+recognized, and real men were extremely busy these days getting the
+tag ends of war-debris business in shape. It was quite a different
+situation--he could have had his choice of several widows. Take it all
+in all, he preferred a matron, his days at playing with debutantes
+were in the discard. The business of buying and selling antiques and
+interior decorating had so inflated his one-cylinder brain that he
+really fancied he needed a mature companionship and understanding.
+
+"I'll buy you a diamond ring, old dear," he said, lightly, "when you
+have me in a corner, hands up--so set your wits to work and see what
+you can do about it."
+
+It was over their hurried breakfast that the discussion took place,
+with Trudy, quite a fright in a tousled boudoir cap and négligé,
+scuttling about the dining room with the breakfast tray and planning
+to send out bills, reorder some draperies, and call up her friends
+until one of them should offer to take her to a fashionable morning
+musical in the near future. After which she would go down town and
+make good at her star act--window wishing.
+
+"You make me so tired I wonder why I don't clear out," she retorted.
+"You think I'm afraid to buy a diamond ring and charge it to you?
+Watch me!"
+
+"Just try it and see what will happen."
+
+"I will, kind sir." Dropping him a curtsy, Trudy repaired to do the
+dishes and swiggle an oil mop about the floor briefly. Then she burnt
+some scented powder and pulled down the window shades. This
+constituted getting the establishment in order, the slavey having gone
+tootling off on a party some days before.
+
+Trudy did not refer to the breakfast-table discussion before she left
+the apartment. She was dangerously sweet, and even went into Gay's
+room, where he was donning his gray-velvet studio blouse for the
+morning's labours. She told him she was quite sure of securing a
+fairly good-sized order for some window shades. Gay did not think it
+necessary to answer. He did not glance at her; instead he yawned and
+sprinkled toilet water profusely on his pink lawn handkerchief.
+
+After a moment's hesitation she went her own way. When she had
+lingered about the jewellery counter like a wilful yet not quite
+wicked child--peering down at the wonderful, enchanting things which
+mocked her empty purse; recalling Gay's first flush of romance and
+devotion; her own clever, untiring methods of pushing him into the
+front ranks; Mary and Mary's little secret, so unsafe in Trudy's
+keeping; Beatrice, who did not know quite how many rings she
+possessed; the whole maddening and really uninteresting tangle--she
+wondered if she could force Gay to buy her a ring. Should she boldly
+order such-and-such a stone and pick out a setting and present him
+with the bill? Why she hesitated she did not know; she was like all
+her wilful sisters who gaze and sigh, pity themselves, and then steal
+away to Oriental shops to appease the hunger by a near-silver ring
+with a bulging near-precious stone set in Hoboken style.
+
+This Trudy did not do. For some reason or other she let her errands go
+by and took a car to Mary's office, stopping at the corner to buy her
+a flower. Instinctively one connected Mary and flowers as one
+associated Beatrice and jewellery.
+
+She found Mary had gone into the old office building to see about
+something and that Steve, who was always as restless as a polar bear
+when forced into a tête-à-tête with Trudy, was alone in his office. He
+was obliged to ask her to sit down and wait for Mary. Trudy peered
+curiously about the rooms. She had never lost that rare sense of
+triumph--returning as a fine lady to the very place where she had once
+worked for fifteen per. Smiling graciously at former associates she
+imagined that she created as much excitement as Beatrice's visits
+themselves.
+
+"It seems so good to come back here," she began without mercy.
+
+Steve had to lay aside his work and wonder why Miss Lunk ever let this
+creature into his private domain. He would see that it did not happen
+twice.
+
+"Ah--I suppose," he knew he answered.
+
+"You are such a busy man; you don't know how I admire you." Trudy
+tried fresh tactics.
+
+"Um--have you seen the morning papers?"
+
+"Thank you but Gay read them to me at breakfast.... You never come to
+our little home, do you? Too busy, I presume. Or are you one of those
+who can forgive everyone but the interior decorator?" This with an
+arch expression and a slight twinkle of the blue eyes--it could not
+quite be called a wink.
+
+"I'm afraid so, Mrs. Vondeplosshe. I leave such things to Beatrice."
+
+"Oh, I understand." Trudy took her cue quickly. "It is out of your
+province. You can't do big, gigantic things if you bother with
+doll-house notions. Now I really prefer--oh, far prefer--men like
+yourself, who----"
+
+Steve started the electric fan whirring.
+
+"Don't you ever long for camping trips or long horseback rides--something
+away from the everlasting fuss and feathers? I do. Would you believe
+it?" she fibbed glibly.
+
+Had Steve been seventy-five he might have believed her. But he merely
+nodded and said that if there was a draft from the fan she could sit
+outside.
+
+Piqued, Trudy turned to Mary Faithful.
+
+"Mary is a wonderful girl, isn't she? Of course you have a Gorgeous
+Girl, too--but she is for playtime. I should think it would mean a
+great deal to have Mary for your chief confidante--she is so good, and
+yet human and----"
+
+Steve stood up abruptly and wondered why no kind friend saw fit to
+enter at this moment. He would have really welcomed Trudy's husband.
+He looked at Trudy briefly, it did not take Steve long these days to
+look at Gorgeous Girls and Gorgeous Girl seconds and realize the whole
+story of their purpose and struggle--things, to have more gayly
+coloured or delicate coloured, gold, silver, velvet, carved, perfumed
+or whatever-the-mode-dictated things, flaunting these priceless sticks
+and stones in each other's faces with pretended friendship.
+
+He did not answer this last lead at conversation, but, not discouraged,
+Trudy went on down the list of her resources.
+
+"How is dear old Mr. Constantine?"
+
+"The same." Steve thanked fortune his father-in-law was paralyzed and
+could furnish a neutral topic of debate.
+
+"Poor dear. So hard for Bea, too. She says she will not do much
+this season. She feels if--if it should not be much longer, you
+understand"--a lowered tone of voice and a sigh--"that she wants to
+have nothing on her conscience. Still, a sick room is wearing, but
+of course love makes any task easy."
+
+Steve suppressed a smile. It was surprising how well this funny little
+person managed to ape the jargon and chatter of Bea's set as well as
+their mode of appearance. She did it mightily well, everything
+considered, and when she proceeded to offer to go and sit with the old
+dear or bring her game board and play with him Steve released a broad
+grin as he pictured Constantine in his helpless captive state
+welcoming Trudy as an entertainer about as much as he would have
+begged for a tête-à-tête with a lady major bent on conquest.
+
+"She would even marry him if she could dispose of Gay," he thought,
+and rightly, as he watched her.
+
+As she was telling him of the head-dress party she intended to give
+for Gay's birthday and how he must come because she wanted him to wear
+a pirate turban, in came Mary, much flurried over a mistake made in a
+shipment, and her nose guilty of a slight but unmistakable shine.
+
+"Oh, Trudy! Run home--your house is on fire! Your cretonnes will
+burn!" she said, half in earnest. "My dear child, I'm mighty busy. It
+is so stupid of Parker!" She turned to Steve. "He made the original
+error and I have to keep cross-examining everyone else to prove to him
+that I know he is at fault and that he must 'fess up. But he
+won't--people never want to say: 'Yes, it is my fault and I'm sorry,'
+do they?"
+
+"Sort of habit since the Garden of Eden, I guess--you can't expect it
+to change now." Steve had lost his listless air. All unconsciously he
+had the same animated, interested attitude that he had had during the
+days of being engaged to the Gorgeous Girl. Trudy saw at a glance that
+Mary had not only realized her starved hopes but that she was quite
+ignorant of the fact that she had done so. To Trudy's mind it was a
+most stupid situation; also an inexcusable one. Here was Mary, the
+good-looking thing who deserved a love such as Steve O'Valley's yet
+never dared to hope he would ever think of her twice except if she
+asked for a raise in salary. This Trudy knew, also. And since it is
+inevitable that a cave man cannot exist on truffles, chiffon frocks
+that must not be rumpled, and an interior decorator with a ukulele at
+his beck and call, Steve had been forced into realizing Mary's worth
+and loving her for it, giving to her the mature and steady love of a
+strong man who, like Parker, had made a mistake and not yet 'fessed
+up. Why Mary did not realize that happiness was within her reach, and
+why Steve did not realize that Mary adored him, and why they were not
+in the throes of talking over her lawyer and my lawyer and alimony but
+we love each other and let the whole world go hang--was not within
+Trudy's jurisdiction to determine. She only knew what she would have
+done and be doing were she Mary--and Steve O'Valley loved her.
+
+She felt the situation was as unforgivable and stupid as to have Gay
+offer her a two-carat diamond ring and to have her say: "No, Bubseley;
+sell it and let us use the money to start a fund for heating the huts
+of aged and infirm Eskimos. The Salvation Army has never dropped up
+that way."
+
+The great miracle had happened. And, envying Mary a trifle and pitying
+Steve for not having won his cause, Trudy justified a hidden resolve
+of long ago: To use Mary's secret in case Beatrice became overbearing
+or impossible. It was mighty fine plunder, upon which she flattered
+herself she had a single-handed option.
+
+So she released Steve from the agony of conversation, and watching the
+tender, happy look as he talked to Mary over some other detail of the
+cropper, she went inside to Mary's office to powder her own little
+nose and realize that she was no nearer to obtaining a diamond ring
+than when she first began to crave for one.
+
+"I'm going to bundle you off," Mary informed her. "I really must--or
+was it anything special?"
+
+It was all Trudy could do not to offer to play the confidential bosom
+friend and urge Mary to show Beatrice where she stood. But somehow the
+brisk business atmosphere, which was very real and brusque, prevented
+her from saying anything except that she had wanted to talk to her.
+She was lonesome--she was going to come some evening and have a good,
+old-time visit.
+
+"Of course--just let me know when."
+
+"Oh"--archly--"are you busy on certain evenings?"
+
+"Sometimes. French lessons; theatre; general odd jobs."
+
+"No particular caller?"
+
+"No," Mary laughed.
+
+"I thought perhaps--you know, one time I came in and----"
+
+"You came one time and found Mr. O'Valley," Mary hastened to add.
+"Yes, I remember, but that was an unusual occurrence. He came in on
+business and when he discovered I did not object to a pipe--he
+stayed."
+
+Trudy was disappointed. "Did Beatrice ever know?"
+
+"Don't know myself." Mary was determined to win out. "I can't see why
+she should--it would not interest her. She never listens to things
+that do not interest her.... You won't know Luke. He grows like a
+weed."
+
+Trudy found herself dismissed. She did not know just how it had come
+about but Mary was smiling her into the elevator and Trudy was sinking
+to the ground floor feeling that though it was none of her business
+unless she got a diamond ring she was just going to make other people
+unhappy, too.
+
+Why this conclusion was reached was not at all clear to Trudy any more
+than to the rest of the world. But after all, it is only fair to leave
+something for the psychologists to debate about. At all events, it was
+the definite conclusion at which she arrived.
+
+She could not resist paying a fleeting return visit to the largest of
+the jewellery stores. After which she told herself that it was little
+short of going without shoes or stockings through the streets to have
+been married the length of time she had been married and to possess
+not a single diamond.
+
+Returning home for a canned luncheon she discovered Gaylord humming a
+love song and strumming on his ukulele.
+
+"I say, old dear," he began, "I have had the greatest luck! I call it
+nothing short of a fairy tale." He pointed at his neckscarf. Coming
+near, Trudy bent over and gave way to a shrill scream. A handsome
+diamond pin reposed in the old-rose silk.
+
+"Where--where did you get it?" she managed to articulate.
+
+"Beatrice really--the result of the raffle for the children's charity.
+You remember we took tickets? She donated this scarfpin, and this
+morning Jill Briggs came in and presented the trophy. My number was
+the winning one: 56."
+
+"She made you win it. You know she did, you toadying little
+abomination! You fairly lick her boots--and she has to tip you
+occasionally. And you sit there wearing that pin and never offering
+to have it set in a pin for me. You dare to keep it--you dare?" She
+lost her self-control.
+
+Gay sprang up in alarm, the ukulele being the only weapon handy,
+holding her off at arm's length. "How low!" he chattered. "How
+d-disgustingly low----"
+
+"Is it? I'll show you--I'll show you whether or not you can wear
+diamond stickpins while I have to endure a wedding ring like a
+washwoman's!"
+
+Before Gay knew what was happening Trudy had left the house. A half
+hour later a suave clerk's voice from the jewellery store was asking
+him to step down at once, his wife had requested it, she had decided
+on a ring for herself but wished his seal of approval--so did the
+store--and a small deposit--would he be able to be with them shortly?
+
+He would, struggling with a man-size rage. After all, the little
+five-eighths-carat stone he had so proudly adorned his bosom with
+would be dearly paid for in the end. That was what came of marrying
+beneath him, he reproached himself as he locked up the apartment and
+went down to the store. To make a scene in a fifty-cent café was not
+worth the effort, Trudy had once proclaimed, but to run the gauntlet
+of real rough-house emotion in a jewellery store frequented by his
+clientele would be social suicide. The only thing was to make Beatrice
+pay a larger commission on the things for her new tea house so that he
+could pay for this red-haired vixen's ring. But this would not in the
+least dim the red-haired vixen's triumph, which was the issue at
+stake. From that moment he began really to hate Trudy.
+
+To her amazement he greeted her in honeyed tones, approved the ring,
+and suggested that the wedding ring be turned in for old gold and
+replaced by a modern creation and so on, produced a deposit, and
+walked out with Trudy, who wore the new symbol of triumph on her
+finger, proposing that they lunch downtown. He was determined to carry
+it through without a moment's faltering.
+
+Even Trudy was nonplussed. Once the treasure was secure in her
+possession she told herself it had been so easy that she was a fool
+not to have tried it before--she even complimented Gay on his
+scarfpin. But she began hating him also. No one would have suspected
+it, to watch these diamond-adorned young people guzzling crab-meat
+cocktails and planning fiercer raids on Beatrice O'Valley's
+pocketbook.
+
+Moreover, Trudy did not change in her decision to make someone
+unhappy. She found that possessing a diamond ring did not remove her
+discontent--and a shamed feeling stole over her, causing her to wonder
+how loudly she had screamed at Gay and how she must have looked when
+she started to strike him in her blind rage; how horrible it was to go
+off on tangents just because you wanted rings on your fingers and
+bells on your toes when all the time the world did contain such
+persons as Mary Faithful, who did not choose to claim a paradise which
+longed to be claimed.
+
+Trudy was unable to keep her fingers out of the pie. She found herself
+naturally gravitating over to see Beatrice. Ostensibly she wanted to
+display her new ring and talk about Gay's luck and the daring gypsy
+embroideries he had just received from New York but really to tell her
+Steve O'Valley, supposedly enslaved cave man, loved another and a
+plainer woman than her own gorgeous self.
+
+She found Beatrice in a négligé of delicately embroidered chiffon with
+luxurious black-satin flowers as a corsage. She had seldom seen her
+look as lovely; even the too-abundant curves of flesh were concealed
+behind the lace draperies. She seemed this day of days to fit into the
+background of the villa, as if some old master had let his most adored
+brain child come tripping from a tarnished frame--a little lady in old
+lace, as it were.
+
+Beatrice had taken up a new activity since her father's stroke. At
+first the stroke had frightened, then bored, then amused her. She
+really liked having what she termed a "comfortable calamity" in the
+family. It was something so new to plan for and talk about, such a
+valid excuse if she did not wish to accept invitations, and an
+excellent reason for runaway trips to Atlantic City or New York "to
+get away from it all for a little--poor, dear papa."
+
+So she sat with her father rather more than one would have expected,
+made him listen to opera records which drove him to distraction,
+talked to him of nothing, and tried to be a little sister to the
+afflicted in a pink-satin and cream-lace setting.
+
+She had lost her interest in Trudy--Trudy no longer amused or
+frightened her. And Gay had become so useful and attentive that had
+the truth about the raffle been known it would be the astonishing
+information that as Beatrice donated the tie pin she decided she
+should pick the future owner--and Gay was the logical candidate to her
+way of thinking.
+
+Also she was quite contented with Steve. He let her alone and he
+adored her--she never doubted that. He wanted her to have everything
+she wished--and that was the biggest, finest way to show one's love
+for another. It was the only way that she had ever known existed. Of
+course all brides have silly notions of perpetual adoration, that sort
+of thing, and Steve was a cave man first and last, bless his old
+heart, but they had passed any mid-channel which might exist and were
+happy for all time to come. They seldom quarrelled, and she no longer
+tried to make Steve over to her liking in small ways, and he seldom
+offered her suggestions. Moreover, he was so good to her father--and
+of course everything was as it should be. It was simply the rather
+drab fashion in which most lives are lived, and Beatrice was quite
+contented. She had never gotten another toy dog, not even as a
+contrast to Tawny Adonis. Really, Gay answered a multitude of needs!
+
+But Trudy was a real person--and a constant reminder of what Beatrice
+herself might have been, and therefore Beatrice never ceased to envy
+her or to picture how much better she could do were she in Trudy's
+place. She preferred not having her about. Besides, Trudy was
+impossible in Italian villas--she belonged in a near-mahogany
+atmosphere with cerise-silk drapes and gaudy vases. Age-old elegancies
+did not harmonize with her vivid self.
+
+So she was not overly cordial in greeting Trudy. But Trudy with an eye
+to mischief managed to draw her little lady-in-old-lace hostess into a
+heart-to-heart talk. And before the afternoon ended Beatrice had
+experienced the first real shock of her life. Her husband smoked a
+pipe in Mary Faithful's living room and never told her; and Mary
+Faithful admitted she loved someone very much and was with him each
+day in business and so on; and Trudy had seen the smile pass between
+them which signifies the perfect understanding! And oh, she did not
+know a tenth of it, deary; not a tenth of it! It was one of those
+subtle, hidden things, nothing tangible or dreadful--like a
+purgatorial state of mind which may result in brimstone or lovely
+angels with harps. Neither could she do anything about it since they
+were both perfect dears and always would be. Not for worlds, in
+Trudy's estimation, would they ever take it upon themselves to prove
+the brittleness of vows.
+
+After which Beatrice thanked Trudy, wishing her a speedy death by way
+of gratitude, going to her room to decide what her attitude should
+be.
+
+To accuse Steve was crude; besides, she must be positive that it was
+true. To get up an affair herself would be no heart balm since she had
+never ceased having affairs--well-bred episodes, rather, perfectly
+harmless when all is said and done, quite like Steve's, for that
+matter! She could not find a new interest in life until she had
+reduced at least twenty pounds, since her dieting and exercises
+required all surplus will power and thought. She would go away only
+her plans were made for months ahead. She could not tell her
+father--the shock might kill him.... There was really nothing left to
+do but suffer--be wretched and wonder if it was true. A horrid state
+of uncertainty--to ask herself how it could ever have happened and
+what would be the end, and terrible things--just terrible things! No
+matter how large a check she might write to buy herself a new toy it
+would have no bearing whatsoever upon the matter. She wished to heaven
+Trudy had confined her gossip to the funny little manicure with
+champagne eyes who flirted with someone else's husband! This was her
+reward for having taken up with a shopgirl person!
+
+The final conclusion she reached was that she did not believe a word
+Trudy had told her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Beatrice took occasion to go to see Mary within the next few days. In
+a particularly fetching costume of green satin with fly-away sleeves
+steadied by silver tassels and a black hat aglow with iridescent
+plumes she surprised Mary at an hour when Steve would be absent. On
+this occasion Beatrice dressed to dazzle and intimidate one of her own
+sex. But the result was unsatisfactory. She found Mary quite passable
+in cloud-blue organdie, a contented look in her gray eyes.
+
+Her own satin costume and plumed bonnet seemed a trifle theatrical.
+She wished she had worn her trimmest tailored effect to impress upon
+this tall young woman that no one else could wear tailor things so
+well as Mrs. Beatrice O'Valley if she chose to do so.
+
+"What can I do for Mrs. O'Valley?" Mary said, almost patronizingly,
+Beatrice fancied.
+
+"I came in to say hello. I've neglected you lately. But you have been
+so horrid about not coming to see my gardens that you deserve to be
+neglected." Her dove-coloured eyes watched Mary closely. "Besides, I
+want to get something for Mr. O'Valley's desk--as a surprise. You must
+help me because, as I have realized, you know so much more about him
+than I do.... There, am I not generous?"
+
+"Very." Mary surmised that something of greater importance lay behind
+the call than showing off the satin costume or selecting a surprise
+for Steve.
+
+"What do you suggest? I'm such a frivolous person my husband never
+tells me his affairs or wishes. The rugs might be in rags and he would
+never ask me to replenish. I understand now so much more clearly than
+ever before why business men and women are prone to fall in love with
+each other; they see each other so constantly under tests of each
+one's abilities. They have to ask each other favours and grant them.
+Sometimes it is a loan of a pencil sharpener, more often it must be
+the aid of the other fellow's brain to help solve a problem. And they
+are so shut away from my world. I'm just the pretty mischief-maker who
+squanders the dollars, and by and by, when self-pity sets in, they
+find there is a mutual bond of admiration and sympathy. Quite a step
+toward love, isn't it? As I came in here to-day I could not help
+thinking of how beautifully you keep business house for my husband.
+Why, Mary Faithful, aren't you afraid I am going to be jealous?" She
+was laughing, but the intention was to have the laugh blow away and
+the sting of the truth remain.
+
+Mary knew this--and Beatrice knew that she did. So trying to make
+herself as formidable as a bunch of nettles Mary took heed to answer:
+
+"I'm afraid you have been reading novels--the ones where the business
+woman grows paler and more interesting looking each day and somehow
+happens to be wearing a tempting little chiffon frock when the firm
+fails and the young and handsome junior partner takes refuge in her
+office and proceeds to brandish a gun and say farewell to the world.
+You see, you don't come down to play with us enough to know what
+prosaic rows there are over pencil sharpeners or who has spirited away
+the drinking cup or why the window must be six inches from the top
+because So-and-so has muscular rheumatism. I don't think you are fair,
+Mrs. O'Valley, and I'm going to risk being quite unpopular by telling
+you that you have no right to say such things even in jest."
+
+Mary's eyes were very honest and her face seemed even firmer of chin
+as she leaned her elbows on her desk, looking up at this pretty
+figurine in satin and plumes.
+
+"Do you fancy it is any fun to go to work at thirteen or fourteen? To
+rush through breakfast to stand in a crowded car, to have to make your
+heart very small as the Chinese say, in order to appreciate the
+pennies and keep them until they become dollars--when all of you longs
+to play Lady Bountiful? To rub elbows with untruthful mischief-makers,
+coarse-mouthed foremen, impossible young fools who wish to flirt with
+you and whom you do not dare to rebuke too sharply; to take your
+hurried noon hour with little food and less fresh air and come back to
+the daily grind; to walk home or hang on to the tag end of a
+street-car strap and finally get to your room or your home so tired in
+body and mind that you wish you had no soul, protesting faintly
+against girls and women having to be in business?
+
+"No, I don't think you do realize. Or to run errands icy-cold days,
+down slushy streets or slippery hills? To carry great bundles of
+such daintiness as you are wearing and leave them at the doors of
+big houses such as your own, numbed, hungry, envious--and not
+understanding the wherefore of it? To catch glimpses of warm halls,
+the sound of a piano playing in a flower-scented salon, to see girls
+your own age in dainty silk dresses sitting in the window and looking
+at you curiously as you go down the steps? Oh, I could tell you a
+great deal more, Mrs. O'Valley."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Eventually some of us survive and some do not--which is another
+story! Those of us who do, who endure such days that we may go to
+night school, and who wear mended gloves and queer hats, forgoing the
+cheap joys of our associates--we do forge ahead and grow grimmer of
+heart and graver of soul. We realize that we are earning everything we
+are getting--perhaps more--only we cannot get the recognition we
+deserve. We are quite different from what you stay-at-home women
+fancy. Tempting chiffon frocks and love affairs de luxe with handsome
+junior partners are farthest from our thoughts. We plan for lonely old
+age--a home and an annuity, a trip to Europe or some other Carcassonne
+of our thwarted selves. We revel in things as you women do--but we
+revel in them because people are shut away from us. You women shut
+away people that you may revel in things.
+
+"All this time the handsome junior partners and so on for whom we keep
+business house and through propinquity are supposed to love--they have
+fallen in love with sheltered girls such as your own self, and
+everything is quite as it ought to be. Now do you really think the
+capable business women of to-day are letting their abilities be spent
+in useless rebellion against their fate and loving the members of the
+firm in Victorian fashion or doing their work intelligently and
+earning their wage? I hardly think there is room for an argument. You
+must understand that the years of errand girl, night school, underpaid
+clerk have taken out of us a certain capacity for enjoyment which you
+women have had emphasized. But thank God it has also taken from us a
+capacity for hysterical suffering, for going on the rocks when we see
+some joy we crave yet know can never be ours!"
+
+"Oh!" Beatrice murmured, wishing Steve would come in or else Mary be
+called to the telephone. "Oh----"
+
+"But I do think there is a certain justice developed among modern
+business women which home women do not comprehend as a rule. Oh, not
+that I underestimate the home women or the sheltered women. There is a
+distinction between the two--but I say that the business woman who
+earns a man's wage and does his work has a certain squareness, for
+want of a better term, which makes her say, 'If I earn something it is
+mine and I shall not hesitate thus to label it. Look out--any one who
+tries to take it from me!' Do you see?"
+
+Mary paused, annoyed at what she had been prevailed upon to say, and
+wondering if by good fortune her opinions had been delivered to empty
+ears.
+
+"So you think you would fight for something to which you felt
+entitled?"
+
+"Perhaps." The gray eyes had a warrior's strength in them. "Fight, win
+it, and then spend no time in sentimental regrets. We learn one thing
+that all women should learn in this great age of selection: That you
+must earn the things you win, and that if you do so you will most
+likely keep them."
+
+"And if you felt that you had earned something--and another woman had
+not--you would play off the conqueror and take the spoils?"
+
+"If I felt it the right thing to do."
+
+Feeling as confused as a bank cashier when caught studying a railroad
+map Mary hastened to suggest a picture of Beatrice handsomely framed
+as a surprise for Steve. She was sure he would like nothing any
+better.
+
+Beatrice felt chirked up upon hearing this. She told herself that
+Trudy was an inveterate gossip and this queer young person must be
+thinking aloud about revolutions in Russia or something like that;
+anything else was too absurd. So she repeated her invitation to come
+to see the gardens with their jewel-like pools and riotous masses of
+colour, and went on her way to select a most gorgeous frame for a most
+gorgeous portrait of herself.
+
+Steve expressed his thanks for the surprise picture quite properly,
+and after giving it a few days of prominence on his desk he relegated
+it to a shelf beside a weather-beaten map of the Great Lakes which had
+always been in the office.
+
+And here another phase of the Gorgeous Girl's effort to do something
+and exercise her faculties occurred. Though she regarded Trudy's
+gossip as absurd she did not forget it. No woman would. It lay in
+waiting until the right moment.
+
+Her father's illness and Steve's worried look as he came home each
+night caused Beatrice to cast about for something noble and remarkable
+to do. The conclusion she reached was that it was her duty to
+retrench; she was not going to have floor-scrubbing duchesses corner
+all the economy feats. She would make it the mode to live simply,
+even be penurious in some ways--now that she had the Villa Rosa and a
+season's budget of frocks. She began looking over the monthly bills in
+deadly earnest. The result was a blinding headache which prevented her
+going in to see her father. She retired to her room in cream lace with
+endless strings of coral, and left word for Steve to drop in on his
+way to his own room.
+
+"Deary, I've been too extravagant," she began faintly as he opened the
+door. She reached out her hand to find his.
+
+He brought a chair over beside the chaise-longue and sat down
+obediently, holding the small, fragrant fingers in his own. "I'd be
+mighty glad if you felt you could live more simply."
+
+"You duck! Just what I'm about to do. I'm going to be the loveliest
+Queen Calico you ever did see--I've no doubt but what I'll be making
+you a beefsteak pudding before long."
+
+Steve smiled. "Who will take this castle of gloom from under us?"
+
+"Oh! We may as well stay here--I don't mean that sort of retrenching--I
+mean in other ways. I'm not going to give expensive bridge parties
+or keep three motors and a saddle horse--I can't ride any more,
+anyway--and I'm not going to have a professional reader for papa.
+Aunt Belle, you, and I can manage that--that will take fifteen dollars
+a week from the expenses. Besides, I am going to have three-course
+dinners from now on--no game, fish, or extra sweet. That will make a
+difference--in time. I shall not buy the new dinner set I had
+halfway ordered--it was wonderful, of course, but I have no right to
+use money for nonsense. Papa can give it to me for my birthday if he
+wants to. Gifts don't count, do they, Stevuns?
+
+"Then there is the servant question. Now cook is seventy-five dollars
+a month; the three maids are fifty each, besides all they steal and
+waste; the laundress and her helper, the chauffeur and all the garden
+men; the food, light, heat--to say nothing of extra expenses; my
+parties and trips and the enormous bills for taxes and upkeep that
+papa pays--I'm afraid to say how much it comes to each month. But it
+is going to stop! Then my clothes--I'm just ashamed to think--while
+you, poor dear, exist on nothing----Oh, thank you, Elsie." A maid had
+brought in a supper tray.
+
+"I didn't want to come downstairs, so I sent for some lunch." She
+watched Steve's amused expression. "Aunt Belle gets on my nerves and
+unless we are having people in, the room is too big to have a family
+meal."
+
+On the tray was a dish heaped with tartlettes aux fruits, cornets à la
+crème, babas au rhum, petits fours, madeleines, and Napoléons. There
+was another dish filled with marrons glacés and malaga grapes
+preserved in sugar. A few faint wedges of bread and butter pointed the
+way to the pot of iced chocolate and the pitcher of whipped cream.
+
+"Well," Steve ventured, looking at the tray, "I'm afraid I don't
+agree----"
+
+"I know your ideas. You think I ought to be frying chops for you and
+giving praise because I have a nineteen-dollar near-taffeta dress. I
+can just see you walking round a two-by-four back yard measuring the
+corn and putting the watermelons into eiderdown sleeping bags so they
+won't freeze; then telling everyone at the shop what an ideal home
+life you lead! No, deary, I'm retrenching because it's a novelty, and
+you would like to retrench----"
+
+"Because I may be forced to do so. I hate to worry you--I never mean
+to unless there is no other way out--but I must warn you that the
+abnormal war conditions are no longer inflating business and everyone
+is watching his step. I cannot take your father's place; he carved it
+out step by step. I fairly aeroplaned to the top and found that while
+I was sitting there in fancied security other people were busy
+chopping down the steps and I should find myself having a great old
+fall down to earth. Now----"
+
+"Don't tell any more things," she murmured, deep in a fruit tart. "I
+can't understand. You are a big, strong man. Go keep your fortune; let
+me play. I'll retrench for fun, and you must love me for it."
+
+"But you are not sincere," he protested. "You don't earn anything. You
+don't save anything----"
+
+Beatrice sat upright, laying aside her plate and fork. "So you believe
+that, too," she half whispered.
+
+"See here," Steve added, in desperation. "I wish we were back in the
+apartment--or a simple house. I wish we kept a cook and a maid and you
+had a simple outfit of clothes and a simple routine. I wish we were
+just folks--you know the sort--you don't find them any place else but
+America--it's a tremendous chance to be just folks if you would only
+realize. I feel as if this were a soap-bubble castle, as if we were
+deliberately playing a wrong game all round."
+
+"You tell papa," she begged; "and if he thinks I'm unhappy he will
+write me another check."
+
+"Then the retrenching is to be the elimination of the
+fifteen-dollar-a-week professional reader, who needs the work and
+earns the money, and two courses from our already aldermanic meals?
+What else?"
+
+"I shall send the silver to the bank and use plate. The smartest
+people do that. I shall make aunty embroider my monograms; she can as
+well as not--the last were frightfully expensive. I'm going to bargain
+sales after this, and take cook and drive out to the Polish market.
+Why, things are two and three cents a pound cheaper----"
+
+Steve rose abruptly, tipping over the dainty chair as he did so. He
+tried to straighten out the pinky rug and set the chair properly upon
+it. Then he squared off his shoulders and dutifully stooped to kiss
+his economical little helpmate.
+
+"All right, darling," he said, glibly, feeling that Gorgeous Girls
+were get-rich-quick men's albatrosses, "that will be very amusing for
+you. It will tide you over until the horse-show season. Now if you
+don't mind I'm going below to ask what the chances are for some roast
+beef!"
+
+Toward Christmas, when Beatrice had gone to New York with friends and
+Mark Constantine discovered that dying is ever so much harder than
+death, Mary told Steve that she was considering a new position, with a
+firm dealing in fabrics, a firm of old and honourable reputation.
+
+She laid the letter from her prospective employers on his desk, in
+almost naïve fashion. It was as if she wanted to show this was no
+woman's threat but a bona-fide and businesslike proposition. And if
+she blushed from sheer foolish joy at the disappointed and protesting
+expression that came into his face it was small solace after the
+struggle she had undergone before she made herself take this step.
+
+"You are not going," he began, angrily. "I'm damned if you do!"
+
+"Oh, my dear, my own dear," she murmured within. Outwardly she shook
+her head briskly and added, "Yes, I am. The hours--the salary----"
+
+"The deuce take that stuff! How much more money do you want me to pay
+you? How few hours a day will you consent to work? You know so well it
+has been you who have done your own slave driving. Besides, I can't
+get on without you."
+
+"You must; I haven't the right to stay."
+
+Steve stood up, crumpling the letter in his hand. "You mean because of
+what I said--that time?"
+
+"Partly; partly because I find myself disapproving of your transactions."
+
+"They are a safe gamble," he began, vehemently.
+
+"Are they? I doubt it. Don't ask me to stay. I want to remain poised
+and content. If I cannot be radiantly happy I can be content, the sort
+of old-lavender-and-star-dust peace that used to be mine."
+
+"Have I ever said things, made you feel or do----"
+
+"Oh, no." As she looked at him the gray eyes turned wistful purple.
+"But it is what we may say or do, Mister Penny Wise."
+
+Steve looked at the crumpled letter. "So you are going over to staid
+graybeards who deal in cotton and woollens, and play commercial nun to
+the end--is that it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you do care?" he persisted, brutally.
+
+"Yes," she answered, defiantly.
+
+"Well, I don't care about fool laws--they are mighty thin stuff. I
+love you," he told her with quiet emphasis.
+
+Mary did not answer but the purple of the eyes changed back to stormy
+gray.
+
+"Why don't you say something? Abuse me, claim me----"
+
+"I haven't the courage even if I have the right," she said, presently.
+"Besides, the last year I have been loving an ideal--the Steve
+O'Valley who existed one time and might still exist if other things
+were equal. But in reality you are a prematurely nerve-shattered,
+blundering pirate; not my Steve." She spoke his name softly. "The
+failure of my ideal--and it's a little hard to live with and work
+with such a failure. My hands are tied, yet my eyes see. Besides,
+there is Luke to think about and care for until some other woman does
+it. I cannot endure this tangle; neither can I get you out of it.
+So I am going away. And I'll keep on loving my ideal and find the
+old-lavender-and-star-dust sort of peace."
+
+"You are not going!" he repeated, sharply, taking her hand. "Do you
+hear? I love you. I have loved you enough to keep silent about it ever
+since that day. Does it mean nothing to you?"
+
+"Don't say it again--it is so hopeless, part of the tangle. You
+haven't the faintest idea how hopeless it is; you are so involved you
+cannot judge. My boy, don't you see that the whole trouble lies in
+getting things you have never earned? The sort of joy you people
+indulge in and try to hold as your own is a state of mind and emotion
+from which no lessons may be learned--calm, stagnant pools of
+superlative surface pleasure. No one learns things worth while when
+he is too happy or too successful. That is why success is a wiser and
+more enduring thing when it comes at middle age. The young man or
+woman has not been tried out, has not had to struggle and discover
+personal limitations. It's the struggle that brings the wisdom.
+
+"But when you have a ready-made stock-market fortune handed to you,
+and a Gorgeous Girl wife, and the world comes to fawn upon you--you
+soon become intoxicated with a false sense of your own achievements
+and values. It does not last--nor does it pay. Such joy periods are
+merely recuperative periods. By and by something comes along and bumps
+into you and you are shoved out into the struggling seas--the learning
+and conquering game. It is not a sad state of affairs--but a mighty
+wise one. Then how can you, who have never earned, expect a joy to be
+yours forever?"
+
+"You have struggled and earned. You have the right to love me!"
+
+"Perhaps--but you cannot hide behind my skirts and claim the same
+right. I shall give you up. Why, this is no tragedy--it is the way
+many commercial nuns find their lives are cast. Commercial nuns, like
+their religious sisters, serve a novitiate--their vocation being
+tested out. We who find that the things of our fancy are husks leave
+them behind and go on in our abilities. We are needed women to-day; we
+must have recognition and respect. We possess a certain unwomanly
+honesty according to old standards, which makes us say such things as
+I have said to you. I love you, the ideal of you; yet I am hopeless to
+realize it. I refuse to keep on making my petty moan for sympathy when
+all the time the bigger part of me demands work and contentment--and
+things just like Gorgeous Girls."
+
+"But there must be a way out. I can't lose you. Do you know what it
+will mean?"
+
+"I fancy I do." The gray eyes were so maternal that Steve felt
+comforted.
+
+"Are you pushing me out of a stagnant joy pool?" he tried saying
+lightly.
+
+"Perhaps I'm heading that way when I stop serving you before all
+else."
+
+"Mary, Mary, quite contrary"--he gave her a gentle little shake--"say
+it all again. Then tell me if this is a mood and you'll change your
+mind and stay. You must stay--or else you don't love me."
+
+"Eternal masculine! That we love to be beaten, cry loudly, tell our
+neighbours, but we must prove our affections by crawling back to have
+you kiss the bruises." She shook her head. "You cannot believe that
+the world recognizes a difference between women with sentiments and
+sentimental women! Why, my boy, do you know that convictions, real
+convictions, do make a convict of a man, put a mental ball and chain
+on him which he can never deny? I have told you my convictions--I am
+convinced I should be doing wrong to both of us to stay. I shall
+go--and love my ideal and spend my salary in soothing things."
+
+"I'm not afraid of a divorce," he found himself insisting.
+
+"Nor I. But should you get one I would not marry you."
+
+"Not ever?" he asked.
+
+Unconsciously they both looked at the photograph of the Gorgeous Girl
+smiling down on them in serene and frivolous fashion.
+
+"Not ever," she told him, turning away.
+
+There was a directors' meeting, which Steve was obliged to attend. He
+knew he sat about a table smoking innumerable cigars without a
+coherent idea in his head as to what was being said or considered.
+When he rushed back to the office Mary had gone home and left a note
+tucked in his blotter. He did not know that Beatrice had dropped in
+and discovered it, reading it with great satisfaction and carefully
+replacing it so as to have the appearance of never having been
+disturbed. All it said was:
+
+"I shall go to the Meldrum Brothers on the fifteenth.--M. F."
+
+He tore the note up in a despairing kind of rage and wrote Mary as
+impetuous a love letter as the Gorgeous Girl had ever received. Five
+minutes after writing it he tore that up, too. Then he called himself
+several kinds of a fool and dashed out to order an armful of flowers
+sent to her apartment. He had his supper in a grill room, to give him
+a necessary interlude before he went home. He walked round and round a
+city square watching the queer, shuffling old men with their trays of
+needles and pins, wrinkled-faced women with fortune-telling parrots,
+and silly young things prancing up and down, bent on mischief.
+Something about human beings bored him; he regretted exceedingly that
+he was one himself; and at the same tune he wished he might
+countermand the florist's order. He took a taxi home and wondered what
+apology he should make for being late. He had forgotten that there was
+a dinner party!
+
+In silver gauze with an impressive square train Beatrice greeted him,
+to say he might as well remain invisible the rest of the evening, it
+would look too absurd to have him appear an hour late with some clumsy
+excuse--and as there was an interesting Englishman who made an
+acceptable partner for her everything was taken care of. Papa, minus
+the professional reader, was lonesome. He had discovered an intricate
+complaint of his circulation and would welcome an audience.
+
+With relief Steve stole away to Constantine's room and amid medicine
+bottles and boxes, air cushions, hot-water bags, and detective
+stories, he listened with half an ear to the reasons why his blood
+count must be taken again and what horse thieves the best of doctors
+were anyhow!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The fifteenth of December Mary Faithful left the office of the
+O'Valley Leather Company, carrying the thing off as successfully as
+Beatrice O'Valley carried off her wildest flirtation. As Mary had
+often said: "When you can fool the letter man and the charwoman you
+have nothing to fear from the secret service."
+
+And no employee of the office suspected that anything lay beneath
+the surface reasons given for changing firms. She accepted the
+handsome farewell gift with as much apparent pleasure as if she
+were to be married and it were a start toward her silver chest. Mary,
+too, had learned how to pretend. Nor did she permit Steve to come
+snarling--masculine fashion of sobbing--at her in vain protests
+trying to shake her from her resolve.
+
+During the last days of rushed work to help her successor find the way
+comparatively easy Mary kept Steve at arm's length. The same strange
+joy at having told him her secret and released the tension was being
+relived again in knowing that she was to leave the tangle with the
+Gorgeous Girl in command of it, and go live her commercial nun's
+existence in the offices of unromantic old graybeards who merely
+thought of her as a mighty clever woman who would not demand an
+assistant.
+
+Mary felt that she had truly passed her commercial novitiate; she made
+herself admit that a commercial life was hers for all time. She would
+leave a forbidden world of romance, watching Luke become a six-footer
+and an embryo inventor as her special pride and pleasure. It was good
+to have it settled, to have it a scar, pale and calm, throbbing only
+under extreme pressure. She even welcomed Beatrice's hurried visit to
+the office and met with gentle patience her half-veiled reproaches for
+leaving her husband's employ.
+
+"I can't see why you go," Beatrice protested, undecided whether it was
+because Steve and Mary had come to some understanding, as Trudy
+hinted, and it would be wiser for Mary to be removed from the everyday
+scene of action; or whether Mary had never thought of Steve except as
+a man who would not pay her such and such a salary and therefore,
+being tailor-made of heart as well as dress, she coolly picked up her
+pad and pencil and was walking off the lot. With the complacent
+conceit of all Gorgeous Girls who fancy that clothes can always
+conquer, Beatrice really inclined toward the latter theory. But being
+a woman she could not resist having a few pangs of unrest and trying
+out her fancied detective ability upon Mary.
+
+She brought her a farewell gift also--a veil case which had been given
+to Beatrice two summers ago. A fresh ribbon had made it quite all
+right, so she acted the Lady Bountiful as she presented her offering
+and listened carefully to Mary's sensible reply.
+
+"I can't go running off to Bermuda and Florida like you people can. I
+am forced to find my recreation in my work--and hides and razors are a
+queer combination for a woman who really likes gardens and sea
+bathing." She laughed so genuinely that Beatrice told herself that
+Trudy was an unpardonable little fool. "I have stayed at the post for
+some time, and now that I've the chance to change my recreation to
+fabrics--I'm tempted to try it. I'm sure you do understand--and it is
+with great regret that I leave the office."
+
+"It will make it hard for Mr. O'Valley," Beatrice continued, blandly.
+"Of course I have realized what an unusual man my husband is--his
+phenomenal rise and all that; and papa has always said he never met
+any one who was so keen as Steve. I have always tried to be diplomatic
+in whatever I said to Mr. O'Valley about his business; I never
+encourage his discussing it at home since it is not fair to ask him to
+drag it into his playtime. So I can't talk over actual details with
+you. But I know it will be hard for him and he will have quite a time
+getting readjusted. He says this Miss Coulson is a nice girl but
+temperamentally a Jersey cow."
+
+Beatrice smiled at this; she had viewed Miss Coulson immediately upon
+the news concerning Mary's resignation, and had felt more than
+satisfied. Even Beatrice realized that Miss Coulson was a nice
+pink-and-white thing who undoubtedly had a cedar chest half filled
+with hope treasures and would at the first opportunity exchange her
+desk for a kitchen cabinet and be happy ever after.
+
+When Beatrice tried discussing the matter with Steve he responded so
+listlessly and seemed so apathetic about either Miss Coulson or Mary
+that Beatrice became vastly interested in fall projects of her own,
+telling Aunt Belle that her theory was correct: It was easier to be
+disappointed in one's husband than in one's friends, and that Steve
+was the sort who was never going to be concerned about his wife's
+disappointment; in fact, he would never realize it had occurred.
+
+The night Mary left the office for good and all, leaving clean and
+empty desk room for Miss Coulson and the little tea appointments as a
+token of good will, Luke met her at the corner and they walked home
+together.
+
+"Are you sorry?" Luke asked, curiously. He had been too busy in
+technical high school to be office boy for some time past.
+
+"No; only you grow accustomed to things. You remember how mother felt
+about the old house." Somehow the thing was harder to discuss with
+Luke as a questioner than with any one else.
+
+"I guess they'll miss you a lot."
+
+"Everyone's place can be filled, we must never forget that. And I
+think the change is wise. The new firm seems agreeable."
+
+"Did Mr. O'Valley give you anything?"
+
+Mary flushed. It had been Luke who received the armful of flowers sent
+anonymously.
+
+"The firm gave me the wonderful desk set; you saw it before it was
+sent to be monogrammed."
+
+"Yes, but I mean Mr. O'Valley himself." Luke was quite manly and
+threatening as he strode along. "Something for a keepsake because
+you've worked so hard for him."
+
+They paused at a corner to wait for the traffic to abate. Mary felt
+faint and queer, as if she had lost her good right hand and was trying
+to tell herself it wasn't such a bad thing after all because she would
+only have to buy one glove from now on. Never to go into Steve's
+office, never to talk with him, listen to him, advise and influence
+him! She wanted to forget the sudden burst of affection, the protests
+of love, for she could not believe them true. What she wanted was to
+return to the old days of guarded control.
+
+Beatrice's cab whirled by just then and Mary caught a glimpse of the
+Gorgeous Girl in a gray cloak with a wonderful jewelled collar, and
+Steve beside her. As the cab passed and Mary and Luke struck out
+across the street Mary experienced a sense of defeat. As she talked to
+Luke of this and that to turn his mind from the too-fascinating
+question of who sent the flowers, she began to wonder if she, too,
+would not wish to be a Gorgeous Girl should the opportunity present
+itself? What would her brave platitudes count if she could wear bright
+gold tulle with slim shoulder straps of jet supporting it? Away with
+sport attire and untrimmed hats! To have absurdly frivolous little
+shoes of blue brocade; to wear the brown hair in puffs and curls and
+adorned with jade and pearls; to have a lace scarf thrown over her
+shoulders and a greatcoat of white fur covering the tulle frock; to go
+riding, riding, riding, at dusk through the crowded streets filled
+with envying shop-girls and clerks, hard-working men and women. To
+ride in an elegant little car with fresh flowers in a gold-banded
+vase, a tiny clock saying it was nearly half after six, outside a gray
+fog and a rain creeping up to make the crowds jostle wearily that they
+might reach shelter before the storm broke. To have Steve, handsome
+and adoring, beside her, laughing at her indulgently, excusing her
+frivolous little self, adoring the fragile, foolish soul of her. At
+least it would be worth while trying.
+
+"I can get a construction set for six dollars," Luke was saying. "That
+will make the bridge models I told you about last week. I'm going to
+get one."
+
+"Yes, dear, I would," she punctuated the conversation recklessly, and
+then another crowd swept about them and more elegant little cabs with
+more Gorgeous Girls and their cavaliers whirled by. Mary hated her
+stupid sophistry about commercial nuns, novitiates and all, her plain
+gray-eyed spinster self doomed to a Persian cat and a bonus at sixty.
+Empty, colourless--damnable!
+
+She realized that she had merely given herself an anæsthetic, just as
+Steve had done, one of unreality and indifference, and that no one
+stays dormant under its power for all time. That all so-called
+commercial nuns try hard to convince themselves that watching the
+procession pass by is quite the best way of all. Yet there is scant
+truth or satisfaction in the statement. At some time or other the
+hunger for being loved crashes through the spinster's brave little
+platform, the hunger for becoming necessary to someone in other ways
+than writing letters or adding figures--to be home, beside the hearth,
+keeping the fires burning, with woes and cares and monotonous
+incidents of such a narrowed horizon. It was for this we were created,
+Mary Faithful told herself--to be the dreamers and the ballast and the
+inspiration of the race. And if commercial nuns have managed to tell
+themselves otherwise--well, who shall be brutal enough to cry "I spy"
+on their little secret? She understood now the abnormal restlessness
+that she had seen in others of her friends--the marriages with men
+beneath them in class who earned but half what they did; unwise
+flirtations, even the sordid things that occasionally creep into the
+horizon. And she blamed none of them for any of it.
+
+She knew now that should the chance come she would want to be a
+Gorgeous Girl. Gorgeous Girls have the faculty of being loved, even if
+they do not merit the emotion. Tailor-made nuns only love, and finally
+set their consciences to work to convince themselves that a new firm
+and more severe collars will be the best way to forget.
+
+Luke was still talking about the construction set and the new
+invention and patent rights and heavy wool sweater with a bean cap for
+the summer vacation. Mary was saying: "Yes, of course," and "How
+interesting!" at intervals; and so they reached home, where Mary could
+plead a headache and go to her room to battle it out alone.
+
+She felt, too, that the town crier could truthfully announce that
+milady was returning to tea gowns for an indefinite period. And she
+felt a passionate hunger to be one of them. That women were going to
+rejoice, the majority of them, to take off their lady-major uniforms,
+stop driving tractors and wearing overalls, and with the precious
+knowledge of the experience they would evolve quite a new-old
+standard, as charming as lavender and lace and as old as Time--the
+gentlewoman! They would no longer accentuate their ugliness with that
+unlovely honesty of the feminist which has been quite as distressing
+as the impossible Victorian lack of honesty and everlasting
+concealment of vital things. They would no longer be feminists or
+ladies, but gentlewomen who sew their own seam, who neither struggle
+unseen nor flaunt their emotions in the face of sex psychologists.
+
+And that both commercial nuns and Gorgeous Girls must be on the wane.
+Yet it was too late for Mary Faithful.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+For many reasons Steve stayed away from Mary. At intervals he sent her
+flowers without a card, such a schoolboyish trick to do and yet so
+harmless that Mary sent him no word of thanks or blame. She merely
+dreamed her gentlewoman's dreams and did her work in the new office
+with the same systematic ability as she had employed for Steve's
+benefit, causing the new firm to beam with delight. She had an even
+more imposing office than formerly, spread generously with fur rugs,
+traps for the weak ankles of innocent callers. She was treated with
+great respect. One time Steve came to see about some civic banquet in
+which the head of Mary's new firm was concerned, and Mary made herself
+close her door and begin dictating so as to appear to be occupied. The
+next day he slipped a love letter into the bouquet of old-fashioned
+flowers he selected for her benefit, and Mary forced herself to write
+a card and forbid his continuing the attentions.
+
+In March Gaylord Vondeplosshe telephoned Mary, about nine o'clock one
+evening, that Trudy was quite ill and wanted to see her. Would Mary
+mind coming over if he called in the roadster? There was a fearsome
+tone in his voice which made Mary consent despite Luke's protests.
+
+Gay was even more pale and weaker eyed than ever when he came into the
+apartment, his motor coat seeming to hang on his knock-kneed,
+narrow-chested self.
+
+It seemed Trudy had not been really well for some time. She was such
+an ambitious little girl, he explained, excusing himself in the matter
+at the outset. He had begged her to rest, to go away, even commanding
+it, but she was so ambitious, and there was so much work on hand that
+she stayed. It all began with a cold. Those low-cut waists and pumps
+in zero weather. She would not take care of herself and she dragged
+round, and refused medicine, and he, Gay, had done everything possible
+under the circumstances; he wanted Mary to be quite clear as to this
+point.
+
+They finally reached the apartment house, where Gay clambered out and
+offered Mary his left little finger as a means of support on the icy
+walk. When she came into the front bedroom of the apartment--a shabby
+room when one looked at it closely--and looked at Trudy she saw death
+written in the thin white face bereft of rouge, the red curls lying in
+limp confusion on the silly little head.
+
+"Oh, Mary," Trudy began, coughing and trying to sit up, "I thought
+you'd never come. Why, I'm not so sick----Gay, go outside and wait for
+the doctor and the nurse. Just think, I'm going to afford a nurse. Oh,
+the pain in the chest is something fierce." She had lapsed into her
+old-time vernacular. "Every bone of me aches and my heart thumps as if
+it was awful mad at me. I guess it ought to be, Mary. How good it is
+to have you. Take off your things. Gee, that pain is some pain! Um--I
+wonder if the doctor can help."
+
+"Do you want me to stay all night?"
+
+Mary was doing some trifle to make her more comfortable. Trudy seemed
+too weak to answer but she smiled like a delighted child. She pointed
+a finger, the one wearing the diamond ring, to a chair beside the
+bed. Mary drew it up closer and sat down.
+
+"Now, my dear, you must put on a warm dressing gown and something to
+pad your chest--this nightgown is a farce," she said, sternly, rising.
+"Where shall I find something? Oh, Trudy--don't!"
+
+Trudy had halfway lifted herself in bed with sudden pain, moaning and
+laughing in terrible fashion. Mary caught her in her arms. Trudy lay
+back, quite contented.
+
+"My, but I've been a bluff," she said, tears on the white, shiny
+cheeks. "Gee, but that doctor takes his time, too. I had to beg
+something great before husband would go for you. He's awful mean, but
+I always told you he was, and he would have a fine time if I should
+die, wouldn't he?" More terrible little laughs as Trudy still nestled
+in the warm curve of Mary's arm.
+
+"You mustn't talk," Mary said. "That's an order."
+
+Gay tiptoed in to say that the doctor had returned but no nurse was
+available. They might get one in a few days.
+
+"I'll stay," Mary offered.
+
+Trudy smiled again. "Rather--have--Mary," she managed to gasp.
+
+The doctor was a preoccupied man who did not fancy late calls on
+foolish little creatures wearing silk nightgowns when they were
+nearing death. He gave some drastic orders and Gay was dispatched with
+a list of articles to be bought while Mary hunted high and low in the
+disorderly apartment, finally wrapping Trudy in thick draperies, the
+only sensible things she could discover.
+
+Trudy lay very still for a few minutes. Mary thought she was dozing
+until she said in an animated voice: "Did you see the ring? It's a
+wonderful stone." Wilfully she thrust her skeleton-like fingers out
+from the bed covers.
+
+Mary nodded. But Trudy was not to be discouraged.
+
+"Gee, but that ring made a lot of trouble. Mary, come here, deary.
+Will you forgive me? They say you forgive the dead anything. Listen, I
+was awfully discouraged and Gay was so mean and I was all wrong,
+anyway--you know--foolish--see? Beatrice was mean, too.... I want you
+to marry Steve because he loves you, and a divorce won't break her
+heart--you just see if it does. I always knew he was the one you
+liked--and he does care now. Sure, he does. You can tell. Even I can
+tell, Mary.... I just told her so--and my, she is wild but won't admit
+it. She never asked me to her house after that if she could get out of
+it. And now I'm sorry--and I want you to have the ring. That will help
+some, won't it? You tell Gay what I said. You must have it. Your
+fingers are thin and long and can carry it off well. And so you do
+forgive me, don't you? I shouldn't have told her, but I couldn't help
+it, she was so mean. And now he cares--and you can be happy----"
+
+"You told Mrs. O'Valley?"
+
+Trudy was panting. Perspiration stood on the white forehead as she
+managed to finish: "I said you always loved her husband and now he
+loves you--and I am sorry. But I was mad at them all; you can't
+understand because you're not my sort.... But you can be happy now.
+Marry him and make him happy."
+
+She dozed into a contented sleep. A little later it was all over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Gay's course of action was exactly what his wife had prophesied. He
+displayed all the proper symptoms of mourning and grief as far as his
+clothing and stationery went. After a brief period of retirement
+from the world, during which he chattered with fear when he wrapped
+Trudy's gay little possessions in bundles and gave them away, he
+emerged in the satisfactory role of a young widower on the loose
+who feels that "Perhaps it was all for the best; an idyl of youth,
+y'know; someone quite out of my sphere," and was welcomed by the
+old set enthusiastically.
+
+Beatrice particularly saw to it that he was petted and properly cared
+for regarding invitations and dainties to eat and drink. In this new
+rôle, with a well-established business and no shrewd red-haired wife
+to point out his meannesses and try to make him go fifty-fifty with
+the profits, Gay felt at peace with all the world.
+
+He did not even miss Trudy's work after a little. The only thing that
+bothered him was an occasional memory of the white, thin face and
+those limp, red curls, the hacking cough and the way her big eyes had
+stared at him that last night. He hated anything connected with
+suffering of any kind, let alone death itself.
+
+Before long Gay found himself back at the club and running a neat shop
+on a prominent corner with deaf mutes from charity institutions
+ensconced in the back rooms to do the work. Memories of Trudy and of
+their life together became as remote as the menu of a dinner eaten
+twelve months past.
+
+He had her ring set over for himself, Mary never having mentioned the
+matter. In fact, he avoided Mary as he avoided Steve, for it was Mary
+who had spent the last moments with Trudy, and whatever was said
+remained a most uncomfortable mystery, to Gay's way of thinking. She
+had remained at the apartment to help Gay through his sorrow, looking
+at him with brief scorn as he stammered inane thanks, scantily
+concealing his impatience to sample a basket of wine just sent in.
+
+As Easter Sunday came slipping into the calendar, with Mary and Luke
+sightseeing in New York in plebeian fashion and not ashamed of it,
+there came a great though not unexpected crash in Steve O'Valley's
+fortunes. Steve's unreckoned-with enemies were about to have their
+innings; they succeeded in bringing Steve down to the level of being
+forced to ask his father-in-law for aid and admit that he could not
+handle Constantine's affairs or what remained of them.
+
+This was exactly what the enemies desired. A number of things combined
+to make the crash a mighty one. Steve still speculated, secure, he
+fancied, in his surplus savings; his speculations all ended
+disastrously and his factories were no longer hustling places of
+commerce. It was a case of keen competition for orders, and closing
+round Steve relentlessly was a circle of enemies forming a gigantic
+trust which played the big-fish-swallow-the-little-fish game. Knowing
+of Steve's disaster on the stock exchange, as well as the thin ice on
+which his industries were managing to survive, the trust now invited
+him to become one of them--at a ridiculous figure--or else be squeezed
+out of the game overnight.
+
+Steve's first emotion upon receiving the offer was nonchalance and
+determination to appear unconcerned and weather it through--so he held
+out as long as he could, plunging in the stock market, with the result
+that he was beaten as if he had been a street vendor whose wares were
+confiscated by the police authorities.
+
+It was not a time to do some new devil-may-care thing. Fortunes were
+not achieved as they had been from 1914 to 1919, and Steve told
+himself in vain that since it was luck that had made him it must be
+luck that should again bring him out on top of the heap. All at once
+luck seemed no jaunty chap with endless pockets of gold but rather a
+disgruntled, threadbare old chap who said: "None of you ever treats me
+rightly when I do smile on you; now go take care of yourselves any way
+you like, for you have ruined me, too."
+
+With this pleasant state of affairs Steve came home to the Villa Rosa
+one April day, half of him wondering if Mary would let him come and
+tell his story and the other half trying to hope that the news of his
+failure would prove the saving grace between the Gorgeous Girl and
+himself, that she would accept his plea of becoming "just folks" and
+starting anew, her father's wealth in the background, entirely removed
+from Steve's new field of endeavours.
+
+[Illustration: "A get-rich-quick man always pays for his own speed"]
+
+It did not take long to disillusion Steve as to this. Beatrice
+accepted the news of the stock failure and the new trust so easily
+that he saw she was incapable of changing her viewpoint.
+
+"Why gamble so, my dear Stevuns?" she began, almost petulantly. "And
+do you know that every time I make engagements for you you are late?
+You are nearly a half hour late to-night."
+
+"I am losing the factory as well. I'll have to sell out for a song. I
+can't compete with cutthroats----"
+
+"Are you going to hurry and dress so we can go?" She smiled her
+prettiest.
+
+At one time Steve would have noted only that white tulle and pearls
+spun witchery, and her skirt possessed the charm of a Hawaiian girl's
+dancing costume. Even at this juncture he recalled and smiled at past
+blindness.
+
+"You don't seem to understand what I am saying, and all that is
+happening. First I played Arizona copper until they taught me not to
+monkey with the band wagon; then I played Cobalt until the same thing
+took place." He sank impolitely into an easy-chair. "Then I got the
+chance to come in with the gang--an insulting proposition any way you
+want to figure--a paltry sum for everything I have and the statement
+in veiled terms that I need not expect to have that unless I did as
+they dictate."
+
+"Well--sell your business to someone else before this happens!"
+
+"I couldn't even if I wished to cheat; it is quite the talk of the
+town."
+
+"Well--manage. Papa will tell you how. Why do you come running to me?
+Goodness, don't stare like that. It's nothing unusual to manage! I
+don't know about business--you made a lot of money once and I should
+think you could do it again."
+
+"It doesn't bother me as much as you think," he said, almost
+breathlessly, eager to know the worst. "It means I am a poor man in
+your estimation. I can sell out to these people, who have thrown a
+steel ring round their game, so to speak, and had to do it until your
+father was out of the running. I can never buck them--I'm not fool
+enough to be goaded on to try. Your father could not win out the way
+things are now--but he could have prevented their ever getting the
+upper hand--because he knows every last turn of the wheel. They could
+not have fooled him. I didn't know what was coming until it was too
+late. A get-rich-quick man always pays for his own speed!"
+
+"Stevuns, you'll make me so nervous I can't go to-night. It's a lovely
+party. You stay home and tell papa all about it, but leave me in
+peace."
+
+"Thank you, I will. And is this the sympathy and the understanding you
+give me when I say we are being ruined?"
+
+"Don't keep saying it." She stamped her little foot. "Papa has lots of
+money in English and Chinese securities and I don't know what-all.
+Why, that factory of his was the least of his fortune."
+
+"That is why your father deliberately lifted three fourths of his
+money from the business just before he was taken ill. He was not going
+to risk cutthroats getting together. He overestimated my ability to
+keep clear of disaster. But after all, I'm not sorry--I don't want
+anything more than I have earned. For you always pay for it in some
+way. The world may not know but these snap-judgment profiteers, these
+get-rich-quick phenomena, always have to pay. But you don't
+understand," he added, gently, "do you? You must not be blamed for
+not understanding anything unless it comprises a good time!"
+
+"I shall not try," she said, petulantly, "and if you love me you will
+hurry to change your things and tell papa briefly. To-morrow will be
+time enough to go into detail and have him start you into something
+new."
+
+"I didn't take your father's money to marry you with, and even if I
+stole it in a sense it was my own efforts that brought it to pass. I
+took no help from him until I was established. And I shall not sneak
+back to let my wife's father support me now. I'm going to drop out of
+this game, Beatrice. It is for you to decide whether you go with me or
+stay at the Villa Rosa." He stood up suddenly and came close to her,
+looking down at her, in all her fragile loveliness, wondering, half
+hoping, halfway expecting that a miracle might happen even as he had
+hoped for the miracle of his fortune--that at this late hour she might
+cease to be a mere Gorgeous Girl and understand.
+
+Beatrice frowned, playing with her fan. "You look shabby and tired,"
+she complained; "not my handsome Steve. You don't mean such things,
+because you do love me and you know I could never be happy living any
+other way. I'm all papa has and he wants me to have everything I want.
+Of course I want this dear house and you and all that both of you
+mean, so be a lamb and get dressed and papa will help you into some
+nice safe business that can never fail."
+
+She stood on her tiptoes, about to kiss him. But he pushed her away.
+
+"You mean you won't begin with me, you won't take our one chance for
+happiness? Just to begin together to learn and earn, be real? Do you
+think for one instant I will be like Gay Vondeplosshe, subsisting on a
+woman's bounty? No. I shall support my wife; it was never my wish that
+we come here to live, and you insisted upon luxuries my purse could
+not afford. In the main, to the outsider, I have supported you. But we
+both know it is not true; I have merely been a needful accessory. From
+now on I shall either support you or else not live with you. I ask you
+to stop having a good time long enough to give me your decision."
+
+"Oh, Stevuns--you funny old brutish dear!"
+
+"If it were a direct loan of money from your father it would be a
+different matter--but it is one of those intricate, involved deals
+that mean more than you or I choose to admit. It means that I have
+learned the hollow satisfaction in being a rich man and husband of a
+Gorgeous Girl. I want to be a plain American with a wife who is
+content with something else save a Villa Rosa and pound-and-a-half lap
+dogs. I am going to be a mediocre failure in the eyes of your set,
+since it is the only way in which I can start to be a true success in
+other than dollar standards. The two elements that collect a crowd and
+breed newspaper headlines are mystery and struggle; remove them and
+you find yourself serene and secure. That is what I propose to do. I
+ask if it is too late for you to come with me or are you going to
+linger in the Villa Rosa? Answer me--I want something real, common,
+definite--can't you understand?"
+
+"If you ever dare treat me like this again----" she began, whimpering.
+
+Steve brushed by her and up the stairs. He went into Constantine's
+room, where the old man lay in helpless discontent, his dulling eyes
+looking at the sunken gardens and the chattering peacocks and his
+heart longing for Hannah and the early days together.
+
+"Why, Steve," he said in a pleased tone, "you look as if they were
+after you. Thought you'd forgotten me. That nurse Bea engaged has a
+voice like a scissors grinder in action."
+
+Briefly Steve told him what had taken place, not mentioning Beatrice's
+name. It had an astonishing effect; as a mental tonic it was not to be
+surpassed, for the fallen oak of a man throbbed anew with life, as
+much as was possible, his hands twitching with rage, his teeth
+grinding, and the dulled eyes bright with interest.
+
+"The dogs! I knew it! Why didn't you tell me long before? Blocked 'em
+off--snuffed 'em out. Meddling with wildcat stocks--asinine any way
+you figure it! Well, I don't know that I blame you. The first success
+was too sweet to leave untried again, eh?" He chuckled as if something
+amused him. "We'll close out to 'em. We'll start again----"
+
+"I don't want another fortune handed me," Steve interrupted. "I want
+to earn it, if you please. I'm not a pauper in the true sense of the
+word; I am merely trained down to the proper financial weight for a
+man of my age and experience to carry, and I can now enter the ring
+with good chances. The other way was as absurd as the four-year-old
+prodigy who typewrites and is rather fond of Greek. But I loved your
+daughter and I thought it quite the right thing to do. I asked your
+daughter just now if she was willing to live with a poor man,
+according to her standards, as your wife lived with you--to give me
+her help and her faith in me.
+
+"Do you know what she answered? She told me to come to you and truckle
+for another big loan, which I am not capable of handling, to cheat
+legally and never hint to the world the truth of the affair. She
+hadn't the most remote idea that I was in earnest when I told her I
+was going to be a failure in the eyes of the world--but I was not
+going to have my wife's father support me. I'm not sorry this has
+happened--feel as if the Old Man of the Sea had dropped off me. But
+this is the thing: either my wife and I will live in a home of our
+own, and such a home as I can provide, being an independent and proper
+family and keeping our problems and responsibilities within our gates;
+or else your daughter is going to stay with you and lose her one
+chance of freedom while I leave town."
+
+The Basque grandmother and the Celtic grandfather lent Steve all their
+passionate determination and keenness of insight, as they once lent
+him chivalry, humour, and charm. He stood before the old man taut with
+excitement and flushed with sudden fury.
+
+"It is you I blame," he added before Constantine could make answer.
+"You kept her as useless as a china shepherdess; it is not her fault
+if she fails to rise to the occasion now."
+
+Constantine's face quivered; what the emotion was none but himself
+knew.
+
+"You poor fool boy!" he said, thickly. "Don't you know I made you a
+rich man all along the line? You never did anything at all. It wasn't
+luck on the stock exchange--it was Mark Constantine back of you. Gad,
+to have made what you did in the time you did you'd have had to do
+worse than dabble your hands in the mud. You'd have had to roll in
+it--like I did." He gave a coarse laugh. "That was what I figured out
+when you said you wanted Beatrice and what you were going to do to try
+to get her. I liked you, I wanted you for her husband. I hated the
+other puppies. So I wasn't going to have Beatrice's husband a
+cutthroat and a highbinder as he would have to be if he had turned the
+whole trick.
+
+"You young fool, don't you suppose I made the stock exchange yield
+you the sugarplums? Gad, I knew every cent you spent and made. It
+was for my girl, my Gorgeous Girl, so why wouldn't I do it? I saved
+your ideals and kept your hands white so that you would be good enough
+for her; that was what I figured out the hour after you had told me
+your intentions. I followed you like the fairy books tell of; I
+brought you your fortune and your factory and scotched all the
+enemies about you--and gave you the girl. And you thought you
+killed the seven-headed dragon yourself.... I don't blame you for
+the foozle, Steve; I cotton-woolled you all along--it was bound to
+come. But, damme, you'll come down to brass tacks and take more of
+my money now and keep her from being unhappy and stop this snivel
+about earning what you get and needing responsibilities--or you'll
+find you've put your foot into hell and you can't pull it out!"
+
+White-heat anger enveloped Steve's very soul, yet strangely enough he
+felt not like sinning but rather like Laertes crying out in mental
+anguish: "Do you see this, O God?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Steve knew he brushed by Aunt Belle, who was coming in to see what her
+brother was roaring about, and down those detestable gilded curlicue
+stairs to seek out his wife and try again to make her realize that for
+once he was determined on what should come to pass as regarded their
+future together, to force her to realize even if he created a cheap
+scene.
+
+Whatever blame fell upon Constantine's shoulders was not within his
+province to judge--Constantine was a dying man and Steve was not quite
+thirty-five. So that ended the matter from Steve's viewpoint. It was
+his intention not to try to evade his personal blame in the matter but
+to make reparation to his own self and to his wife if he were
+permitted. If he could once convince his wife that their sole chance
+of future happiness and sanity lay in beginning as medium-incomed
+young persons with all the sane world before them it would have been
+worth it all--excepting for Mary Faithful.
+
+Even as Steve tried in a quick, tense fashion to dismiss Mary from his
+mind and say that Beatrice was his wife and that love must come as the
+leavener once this hideous wealth was removed, he knew the thing
+was impossible. The best solution of which he was capable was to say
+that he owed it to both Mary Faithful and Beatrice to play the game
+from the right angle and that in causing Beatrice to disclaim her
+title of Gorgeous Girl and all it implied he at least would find
+contentment--the same sort of uninteresting contentment of which
+Mary boasted.
+
+He found Beatrice in a furore of tears and protests, angered at
+missing the dinner engagement and not understanding why any of it was
+necessary. She felt her own territory had been infringed upon, since
+making a scene was her peculiar form of mental intoxication.
+
+But Steve was composed, even smiling, and as he came up to her she
+fancied her father had made everything all right as his check book had
+seen fit to do upon so many occasions. The slight worry over Steve's
+possible folly vanished, and she felt it safe to proceed to reproach
+him for having been so horrid.
+
+"Now, my dear Stevuns, why did you get me all upset? And yourself and
+poor papa, to say nothing of my having to send word at the last moment
+that we could not attend the dinner. Oh, Steve, Steve, will you ever
+be really tamed?"
+
+"Come and sit beside me." He drew out a notebook and pencil. "I must
+tell you some things."
+
+Rather curious, she obeyed, but keeping a discreet distance so her
+frock would not be ruffled. "I'm still cross," she warned.
+
+Steve was writing down figures, adding them and making notations.
+
+"Look here, dear," he began, patiently; "this is just where I shall
+stand--a poor man to your way of thinking, almost as poor as when I
+set out to win you. I'm going into a salaried job for a few years--a
+real hope-to-die job--and we can have a house----"
+
+"I thought we talked that all out before," she interrupted, half
+petulantly, half wistfully. "Why do you keep repeating yourself?
+You'll be thumping your fists the first thing we know!"
+
+"Do you fancy I am not going to do this? Are you not sufficiently
+concerned to listen, to realize that I have been a blind, conceited
+fool? But I have learned my lesson. I shall support my wife from now
+on and live in my own house or else I shall no longer be your
+husband."
+
+"Steve!"
+
+She opened and shut her fan quickly, then it fell to the floor. But he
+did not pick it up.
+
+"You were never keen for details, so I shall not irritate you now by
+introducing them. But the fact remains that I have been made and
+backed by your father merely because he wished me to be your husband.
+You picked me out--and I was keen to be picked out--and he decided to
+make me as proper a companion for you as possible. I am in some ways
+as untried to-day as any youngster starting out; as I was when I
+fancied I made the grand and initial stride by myself. Your father
+feels that I ought to be eternally grateful--but then, what else could
+the father of the Gorgeous Girl think? He has harmed me--but he has
+ruined you. I hardly thought you would meet me halfway, still it was
+worth the try."
+
+Forgetful of her flounces Beatrice crumpled them in her hands, saying
+sharply: "Are you taking this way of getting out of it?"
+
+"Good heavens!" Steve murmured, half inaudibly, "I keep forgetting you
+have never been taught values or sincerity! There is no way I can
+prove to you how in earnest I am, is there?"
+
+"You mean to say that I am a failure?" she preened herself unconsciously.
+
+"The most gorgeous failure we have with us to-day! And the worst of it
+is it is growing to be a common type of failure since gorgeousness is
+becoming prevalent. There are many like you--not many more gorgeous,
+and thousands less so. You are a type that has developed in the last
+twenty years and is developing these days at breakneck speed! And you
+can't understand and you don't want to and I'm damned if I'll try to
+explain again."
+
+"Well," she asked, shrewdly, quite the woman of the world, "what is it
+you are about to do? Wear corduroy trousers and a red bandanna and
+start a butcher-paper-covered East-Side magazine filled with
+ravings?"
+
+"No; that is another type we plain Americans have on our hands."
+
+"Don't spar for time."
+
+"I'm not. I'm through sparring; I want to go to work. I want----"
+
+What was the use? He stopped before adding another spark to her
+wrath.
+
+"I suppose you want to marry that woman--Mary Faithful, who has loved
+you so long and made herself so useful! She was clever enough to
+pretend to efface herself and go to work for someone else, but I dare
+say you have seen her as often as before. Oh, are you surprised I
+know? I gave you the credit of being above such a thing, but Trudy
+told me that this woman had told her the truth--so you see even your
+Mary Faithful cannot be trusted. You had better turn monk, Steve, be
+done with the whole annoying pack of us! Anyway, Trudy came running to
+me, but I never lost sleep over the rumour. I felt you were above such
+things, as I said, but presently little indications--straws, you
+know--told me she cared; and if a woman cares for a man and is able to
+pass several hours each day in his employ, unless she is cross-eyed or
+a blithering idiot she cannot fail to win the game! Now can she,
+Stevuns?"
+
+Steve raised his hand in protest. "Please leave her out of it."
+
+"So--we must talk about my being a failure, my father clipping your
+wings of industry and all that--yet we must not mention a woman who
+has loved you--and gossiped about it."
+
+"She did not! You know Trudy--you know her nature," he interrupted.
+
+"Taking up her defence! Noble Stevuns! Then you do reciprocate--and
+you are planning one of those ready-to-be-served bungalows with even a
+broom closet and lovely glass doorknobs, where Mary may gambol about
+in organdie and boast of the prize pie she has baked for your supper.
+Oh, Stevuns, you are too funny for words!"
+
+She laughed, but there was a malicious sparkle in her eyes. She was
+carrying off the situation as best she knew how, for she did not
+comprehend its true significance, its highest motive. Underneath her
+veneer of sarcasm and ridicule she was hurt, stabbed--quite helpless.
+
+With her father's spirit she resolved to take the death gamely--and
+make Steve as ridiculous as possible, to have as good a time as she
+could out of such a sorry ending. But she knew as she stood facing
+him, so tired and heavy-eyed, the rejected sheet of figures fallen on
+the brocaded sofa between them, that it was she who met and
+experienced lasting defeat.
+
+By turns she had been the spoiled child of fortune, the romantic
+parasite, the mad butterfly, the advanced woman, the Bolshevik de
+luxe; and finally and for all time to come she was confronted with the
+last possibility--there was no forked road for her--that of a shrewd,
+cold flirt. She realized too late the injustice done her under the
+name of a father's loving protection. Moreover, she determined never
+to let herself realize to any great extent the awfulness of the
+injustice. It was, as Steve said, a common fate these days--there was
+solace in the fact of never being alone in her defeat. But at five
+minutes after twelve she had glimpsed the situation and regretted
+briefly all she was denied. Still it was an impossibility to cease
+being a Gorgeous Girl.
+
+She felt cheated, stunted, revengeful because of this common fate.
+Steve was setting out for new worlds to conquer--he very likely would
+have a good time in so doing. She must continue to be fearfully rushed
+and terribly popular, having a good time, too. How dull everything
+was! Strangely, she did not give Mary Faithful or her part in Steve's
+future a thought--just then. She was thinking that Ibsen merely showed
+the awakened Nora's going out the door--as have Victorian matrons
+shown their daughters, urging them to do likewise. But it really
+begins to be interesting at this very point since it is not the
+dramatic closing of the door that is so vital, but the pitfalls and
+adventures on the long road that Nora and her sisters have seen fit to
+travel.
+
+Beatrice was deprived of even this chance, even the falling by the
+wayside and admitting a new sort of defeat, or travelling the road in
+cold, supreme fashion and ending with selfish victory and impersonal
+theories warranted to upset the most domestic and content of her
+stay-at-home sisters. But she, like all Gorgeous Girls, must be
+content to stand peering through the luxurious gates of her father's
+house, watching Steve go down the long road, then glancing back at her
+lovely habitation, where no one except tradesmen really took her
+seriously, and where all that was expected of her, or really
+permitted, was to have a good time.
+
+Steve shrugged his shoulders. He felt a great weariness concerning the
+situation, nonchalant scorn of what happened in the future of this
+woman. As for Mary Faithful--that was a different matter, but he could
+not think about Mary Faithful while standing in the salon of the Villa
+Rosa with the Gorgeous Girl as mentor.
+
+"Suppose we do not try to talk any more just now?" he suggested. "We
+are neither one fit to do so. Wait until morning and then come to an
+agreement." He spoke as impersonally as if a stranger asking aid
+interrupted his busiest time.
+
+Beatrice recognized the tone and what it implied. "I am agreed," she
+said, after a second's hesitation. "Do not fancy my father and I will
+come on our knees to you."
+
+She swept from the room in a dignified manner. Steve waited until he
+heard the door of Constantine's room bang. He knew his wife had rushed
+to tell her father her side of the matter--to receive the eternal
+heart's ease in the form of a check so she could go and play and
+forget all about Stevuns the brute.
+
+He walked unsteadily through the rooms of the lower floor, out on to
+the main balcony, and back again. He could not think in these rooms;
+he could not think in any corner of the whole tinsel house. It seemed
+a consolation prize to those who have been forbidden to think.
+
+He went to his own ornate and impossible room, which should have
+belonged to an actor desiring publicity, or some such puppet as Gay.
+He tried to sleep, but that too was impossible. He kept pacing back
+and forth and back and forth, playing the white bear as Beatrice had
+so often said, wondering if it would be too much the act of a cad to
+go to Mary Faithful and merely tell her. He could think at Mary's
+house--he must have a chance to think, to realize that Beatrice
+refused to come with him and to tell himself that nothing should force
+him to remain in the Villa Rosa and be the husband of the Gorgeous
+Girl, set right by her father's checks, the laughingstock of the
+business world that had called his hand.
+
+The humiliation, the failure, the loss--were good to have; stimulating.
+
+Wonderfully alive and keen, he did not know how to express the new
+sensation that took possession of his jaded brain. He was like a
+gourmand dyspeptic who has long hesitated before trying the diet of a
+workingman and when someone has whisked him off to a sanitarium and
+fed him bran and milk until he has forgotten nerves, headaches, and
+logginess he vows eternal thankfulness to bran and milk, and is humbly
+setting out to adopt the workingman's diet instead of the old-time
+menus.
+
+Steve could begin to work simply, to find his permanent place in the
+commercial world. He had enough money--or would have--to start a home
+in simple yet pleasant fashion; he had knowledge and ability that
+would place him favourably and furnish him the chance to work
+normally toward the top. That was all very well, he told himself
+toward early morning--but must it be done alone? He had had the
+Gorgeous Girl as the incentive to make his fortune, and now he had
+Mary Faithful as the incentive to lose it--and if the Gorgeous Girl
+stayed on at the villa and became that pitied, dangerous object, a
+divorcee; and if Mary did care-----Strange things, both wonderful and
+fearsome, happen in the United States of America.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Beatrice, never having gone to her father for anything save money, did
+not know how to broach the subject in heartfelt and deep-water
+fashion. When she went into his room she found him with scarlet spots
+burning in his grayish cheeks, his dark eyes harsher and more
+formidable than ever. He tried twisting himself on the bed, resulting
+in awkward, halfway muscular contortions and gruff moans punctuating
+the failure. He held out his arms to her and she went flying into
+them, not the dignified woman of the world putting a cave man in his
+proper place.
+
+"He is impossible!" was all she said, giving way to hysterical sobs.
+"Don't even try talking to him again----"
+
+More gruff moans before Constantine began coherently: "He'll do what I
+say or he'll not stay in this house. I expected this----"
+
+"Oh, you don't understand, papa. He doesn't want to stay here, not at
+all! He does not want me. There, now you know it! He must have said
+something of this to you--perhaps you didn't believe him. Neither did
+I--at first. Oh, my head aches terribly and I know I shall be ill. He
+wants me to be a poor man's wife--starting again, he calls it--while
+he earns a salary and we live in a poky house and I do the cooking.
+I'd think it awfully funny if it was happening to any of my
+friends--but this is terrible! Well, goat-tending tells, doesn't it?
+And after all we have done for him--to babble on about honesty and
+earning and all those socialistic ideas. He is a dangerous man, papa;
+really. I don't care."
+
+Constantine stopped moaning. "Look up at me." He made her lift her
+face from the tangle of silk bed quilts. "Do you love him?"
+
+"Why, papa, I always adored Stevuns--but of course I can't give up the
+things to which I've been accustomed! It's so silly that I think he is
+queer even to suggest it--don't you?"
+
+"You won't love him if he goes out of here and you stay," the old man
+said, slowly; "but if he will stay and do as I tell him--then you'll
+love him?"
+
+"Yes"--with great relief that she was not called upon to keep on
+explaining and analyzing her own feelings and Steve's motives; it was
+entirely too much of a strain--"that is it. If Steve will stay here
+and do what you tell him--I think he'd better retire from business and
+just look after our interests--I shall forgive him. But if he keeps up
+this low anarchistic talk about dragging me to a washtub--oh, it's too
+absurd!--I'm going to Reno and be done with all of it." She drew away
+from her father and the same cold, shrewd look of the mature flirt
+replaced her confusion. "Don't you think that is sensible?"
+
+Her father closed his eyes for a moment. Then he whispered: "So you
+don't love him."
+
+Beatrice had to stoop to catch the words. "You can't be expected to
+love people that make you unhappy."
+
+"Oh, can't you?" he asked. "Can't you? Did you never think that loving
+someone is the bravest thing in the world? It takes courage to keep
+on loving the dead, for instance; the dead that keep stabbing away at
+your heart all through the years. Loving doesn't always make you
+happy, it makes you brave--real love!"
+
+He opened his eyes to look at her closely. Beatrice whimpered.
+
+"Isn't it time for your drops? You're too excited, papa dear."
+
+"Then you don't love him," he repeated. "Well, then, it's best for you
+both that he go--that's all I've got to say. I thought you cared."
+
+Beatrice's eyebrows lifted. "Really, I can't find any one who can talk
+about this thing sensibly," she began.
+
+Suddenly she thought of Gay. There was always Gay; at least she could
+never disappoint him, which was what she meant by having him talk
+sensibly. Gay knew everyone, how to laugh at the most foolish whims,
+pick up fans, exercise lap dogs, and wear a fancy ball costume. What a
+blessed thing it was there was Gay.
+
+"It has been quite too strenuous an evening," she said, in conclusion,
+"so I'm off for bed. Steve and I will talk more to-morrow. Good-night,
+papa. I'm terribly distressed that this has come up to annoy you." She
+bent and kissed him prettily.
+
+"I've seen you make more fuss when your lap dog had a goitre
+operation," her father surprised her by way of an answer. "It's all
+different in my mind now." The thick fingers picked at the bed quilt.
+"I thought it would break your heart, but it's just that you want to
+break his spirit; so it's better he should go."
+
+Left alone, Constantine lay staring into darkness, his harsh eyes
+winking and blinking, and the gnarled thick fingers, which had robbed
+so cleverly by way of mahogany-trimmed offices and which had written
+so many checks for his Gorgeous Girl, kept on their childish picking
+at the quilt. Yet his love for Beatrice, monument to his folly, never
+dimmed. He merely was beginning to realize the truth--too late to
+change it. And as the pain of loving his dead wife had never ceased
+throughout the years, so the new and more poignant pain of loving his
+daughter and knowing that she was in the wrong began tugging at his
+heartstrings. Well, he was the original culprit; he must see her
+through the game with flying colours. As for Steve--he envied him!
+
+In the morning Steve was accosted by Aunt Belle, who felt she must say
+her conventional, marcelled, gray-satin, and violet-perfumed
+reproaches. All Beatrice had told her was that Steve was now an
+impossible pauper, that he loved Mary Faithful and had loved her for
+years, that it was quite awful, and she was going to divorce him. Her
+aunt, with the proper emotions of a Gorgeous Girl's aunt, and
+uncomfortable memories of love in a cottage with the late Mr. Todd,
+began to upbraid Steve. She began in a cold, stereotyped fashion,
+calling his attention to the broken-hearted wife, the sick man who lay
+upstairs and who had befriended him, and of the social ostracism that
+was to result should he take such a drastic step.
+
+She felt it indelicate to mention Mary but she did say there were
+"other vicious deceits of which we are well aware, my young man,"
+warning him that in years to come old age would bring nothing but
+remorse and terror, asking him what he would be forced to think when
+his marriage was recalled?
+
+"My marriage?" Steve answered, too pleasantly to be safe. "I dare say
+in time I'll come to realize it is always the open season for
+salamanders." Which left Aunt Belle with the wild thought that she
+must accompany Beatrice to Reno to sit out in the sagebrush for the
+best part of a year.
+
+Steve found his wife in her dressing room; she had waited as eagerly
+for his coming as she had done during the first days of their
+engagement. She, too, during a sleepless night had resolved that the
+only solution was a divorce, but she was going to have just as gay a
+time out of the event as was possible, which included making Steve as
+wretched as could be. Even with the rumours concerning Mary she
+believed, in the conceited fashion of all persons so cowardly that
+they merely consent to be loved, that Steve still adored her and that
+she was dealing with the deluded man of a few years ago.
+
+She wore a sapphire-coloured negligé with slippers to match, and lay
+in her chaise-longue gondola, her prayer books with their silver
+covers and a new Pom as touching details to the farewell tableau. Then
+Steve was permitted to come into the room.
+
+She gazed at him in a sorrowful, forgiving fashion, quite enjoying the
+situation. Then she held out her hand, wondering if he would kiss it;
+but he took it as meaning that he might sit down or try to sit down on
+a perilous little hassock which he had always named the Rocky Road to
+Dublin despite its Florentine appearance.
+
+"I hope you agree with me," he began, in businesslike fashion as he
+noted the prayer books, the untouched breakfast tray, the snapping
+Pom, which never tolerated his presence without protest. "I am going
+to see your father, out of courtesy, and explain more in detail how
+things stand. It won't interest you so I sha'n't bore you. I have
+enough money and securities to cover the loss of any of his money. I
+shall apply for a position in another city. I am reasonably sure of
+obtaining it. It seems to me it would be better that I go away."
+
+"I forgive you, Steve," she said, sadly, shaking her golden head.
+
+"I presume you will want to do something about a legal separation--and
+if you do not I shall."
+
+The prayer books fell to the floor in collision with the slipping Pom
+but Beatrice did not notice.
+
+"So you do love her!" There was a hint of a snarl in her high-pitched
+voice. "So you want to marry her after all!"
+
+"I think," Steve continued, in the same even voice, "that as you are
+going to tire of being a divorcee playing about, and will want a
+second husband to help with the ennui that is bound to occur, you had
+best select your form of a divorce and let me do what I can to aid in
+the matter. You are very lovely this morning, as you usually are.
+There is no doubt but what many men far better suited to you than I
+will try to have you marry them--they will wisely never expect to
+marry you. That was our great mistake, Beatrice. I thought I was
+marrying you--but you were really marrying me."
+
+"So you do love her," she repeated, paying no heed to what else he
+said.
+
+"Yes, I do," Steve said, with sudden honesty. It was a relief to be as
+brutal and uncomplimentary as possible; it offset the silver-covered
+prayer books, the breakfast tray, the bejewelled Pom, the whole
+studied, inane effect of a discontented woman trying to play coquette
+up to the last moment.
+
+"I have loved her a long time. I could no more have refrained from it
+than you can refrain from feeling a pique at the fact, though you have
+nothing but contempt for us both and only a passing interest if the
+truth were known. I am glad you have persisted in asking me until I
+told you. I think one of the most promising signs that women will
+survive is the fact that they are never afraid to ask questions, no
+matter how delicate the situation. Men keep silence and often bring
+disaster on their sulky heads as a result."
+
+"So--and you dare tell me this?"
+
+"Of course I do. I dare to tell you the truth, which no one else has
+ever taken the pains to tell you. If you do not get a divorce I intend
+to. Not that I champion the custom as a particularly healthy
+institution, but it is sometimes a necessary one. If it is any
+satisfaction to you I do not think Miss Faithful has the slightest
+idea of marrying me. She has put that part of her aside for business
+and taking care of Luke. The time has passed when she would have
+married me. Still, I shall try to make her change her mind," he added
+with the same spirit he had once displayed toward winning the Gorgeous
+Girl. "Only this time I shall not bargain for her."
+
+Beatrice gave an affected laugh. "Quite a satisfactory arrangement all
+round. I hope you do not bother me again. Tell my father what you
+like, and then take yourself off to the new position and do as you
+please. When I decide what course I shall pursue you will be
+informed. Would you please pick up my prayer book?" she added,
+languidly.
+
+Steve bent over to grasp the intricate nothing in his hand and lay it
+gently in the sapphire-velvet lap.
+
+"Good-bye, Beatrice," he said, a trifle sadly--for the day the child
+discovers there are no fairies is one of sadness.
+
+It was something of this Steve felt as he looked at his wife for the
+last time. How thrilled and adoring he would have one time been. Just
+such visions, a trifle cruder no doubt, had stirred his young soul in
+the bleak orphanage days--the boo'ful princess and the valiant young
+hero chaining the seven-headed dragon. And in America it was just
+bound to have come true!
+
+"Good-bye, Stevuns," she answered, in the same gay voice--but a trifle
+forced if one knew her well. "I hope you have a wonderful time leading
+a mob somewhere and your wife selling your photographs on the next
+corner curbstone!"
+
+She pretended to become interested in the prayer book; and, with the
+Pom shooing him out by sharp, ear-piercing barks, Steve left the
+room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Not an hour later Mrs. Stephen O'Valley's card was taken in to Mary
+Faithful as she sat trying to work in the new office--it never ceased
+to be new to her. She had heard the swift rumours of Steve's failure.
+Understanding that the visitor's card had a deeper significance than
+the messenger who delivered it realized, Mary closed the outer doors
+of her office and waited for her guest.
+
+It was a very Gorgeous Girl who swept serenely into the room and lost
+no time in introducing the nature of her errand.
+
+"I don't know how well informed you are in business reports," she
+began in her high-pitched voice, "but perhaps you have heard----"
+
+"The report of the new leather trust--without including your husband's
+factory? Yes--but it was bound to come. I always told him so."
+
+Beatrice lost sight of the business introduction she had so carefully
+planned while dressing and then driving downtown.
+
+"You have told my husband a great many things, haven't you?" she
+insisted. "Don't seem to be surprised. I am quite well informed."
+
+She was scrutinizing Mary as she talked. Within her mind was the
+undeniable thought that there was something about this thin, tall
+woman with gray eyes which was real and comforting. She even wished
+that Steve had fallen in love with someone else, and that she,
+Beatrice, might have come to Mary for comfort and advice. If any one
+could have set her right with herself it would be just such a
+good-looking thing, as Trudy used to say, a commercial nun who had
+kept her ideals and was not bereft of ideas. Faith and intellect had
+been properly introduced in Mary's mind.
+
+Mary blushed. "I have always wished to speak to you about something
+Mrs. Vondeplosshe told you shortly before her death. Won't you sit
+down? I am sure we have much to say to each other."
+
+Beatrice found herself obeying like a docile child. As she took a
+chair facing Mary's desk she realized that in just such a kind,
+practical fashion would Mary proceed to manage Steve, that the years
+of experience in the business world as an independent woman would give
+Mary quite a new-fashioned charm in his eyes. Whether she was dealing
+with gigantic business interests in deft fashion or showing tenderness
+for the little girl who puts away her dolls for the last time, Mary
+possessed a flexibility of comprehension and power. One could not be
+cheap in dealings with her. And as the eternal sex barrier was not
+present in Beatrice's behalf she realized that her jargon so
+impulsively planned would never be said. Nor could she dismiss Mary
+patronizingly and say the halfway melodramatic things she had said to
+Steve. It occurred to her as Mary began to talk that Mary had been
+brave enough to love, not merely be loved, the truth of this causing
+her to wince within.
+
+"In a malicious moment Trudy told you of my--my affection for your
+husband. It is true, if that is what you have come to ask me about. I
+told myself months ago that if you did come to ask me this thing I
+should answer you truthfully, and we must remain at least polite
+acquaintances over a hard situation. I think I have played fairly."
+Mary's face had a tired look that bore proof to the statement. "I even
+left his employ. As I once told you from an impersonal statement, I
+have a theory that many business women of to-day are in love with
+someone in their office. Propinquity perhaps and the shut-in existence
+that they lead account for much of it. Yet no woman is a true woman
+who forgets her employer is a married or engaged man.
+
+"You and I know, however, that love does not stop to ask if this is
+the case, and I sometimes feel--impersonally, remember--that the
+business women earn the love of their employers and associates more
+than said employers' and associates' wives. Does it sound strange?
+Of course you need not agree--I hardly expect it. Yet the fact remains
+that we watch and save that you Gorgeous Girls may spend and play.
+In time the man, tense and non-understanding of it all, discovers
+that his trust and confidence may be placed in the business woman
+while romantic love is not enduring in his home. Not always, of
+course; but many times in these days of overnight prosperity and
+endless good times. So I have neither shame nor remorse--I have as
+much right to love your husband as you have--and because of that I
+shall be as fair to you as I would ask any woman to be toward me
+in similar circumstances."
+
+"I think I understand," the Gorgeous Girl said, swiftly. "I see
+something of the light." She laughed nervously. It was easier to laugh
+than to cry, and one or the other was necessary at this moment. "I
+wanted to tell you that my husband is going away to take a rather
+mediocre position. I shall divorce him."
+
+"He's won out," Mary said, in spite of herself.
+
+"Has he? So you have been the urge behind him and his poverty talk?"
+
+"I'd like to claim the credit," Mary retorted.
+
+"Really?"
+
+Beatrice found herself in another mental box, undecided how to cope
+with the situation. She had fancied she could make Mary cry and beg
+for silence, be afraid and unpoised. Instead she felt as ornate as a
+circus rider in her costume, and as stupid regarding the truth as the
+snapping Pom under her arm. Her head began to ache. She wondered why
+all these people delighted in accepting sacrifice and seeking
+self-denial--and she thought of Gay again and of what a consolation he
+was. And through it all ran a curious mental pain which informed her
+that she had not the power to hurt or to please either of these
+persons, and she was being politely labelled and put in her own groove
+by Mary Faithful. This stung her on to action, just as any poorly
+prepared enemy loses his head when he sees the tide is turning.
+
+In desperation she said, coldly: "After all, I shall play square with
+you because you have played square with him. I'll give you the best
+advice a retiring wife can give her advancing rival. Don't copy me--no
+matter how Steve may prosper in years to come, do you understand? Oh,
+I'm not so terrible or abnormal as you people think. I'd have done
+quite well if my father had never earned more than three thousand a
+year and I had had to put my shoulder to the wheel. But don't ever
+start to be a Gorgeous Girl--stay thrifty and be not too discerning of
+handmade lace or lap dogs. You know, there's no need to enumerate.
+Stay the woman who won my husband away from me--and you'll keep him.
+What is more, I think you will make him a success--in time for your
+golden-wedding anniversary! There, that's as fair as I can be."
+
+"Quite," Mary said, softly.
+
+"Once you admit to him there is a craving in your sensible heart to be
+as useless as I am--then someone else will come along to play Mary
+Faithful to your Gorgeous Girl." There was a catch in the light, gay
+voice. "I don't want him," she added, vigorously. "Heavens, no, we
+never could patch it up! I shall always think of this last twelve
+months as _l'année terrible!_ My Tawny Adonis was a far more soothing
+companion than Steve. Nor do I envy you and your future. I don't
+really want Steve--and you deserve him. Besides, we women never feel
+so secure as novelists like to paint us as being in their last
+chapters! So I'm giving you the best hint concerning our mutual cave
+man that a defeated Gorgeous Girl ever gave a Mary Faithful. As far as
+I am concerned the thing is painless. I shall have a ripping time out
+West, and some day perhaps marry someone nice and mild, someone who
+will stand for my moods and not spend too much of my money in ways I
+don't know about--a society coward out of a job! The thing that does
+hurt," she finished, suddenly, "is the fact that I'd honestly like to
+feel broken-hearted--but I don't know how. I've been brought up in
+such a gorgeous fashion that it would take a jewel robbery or an
+unbecoming hat to wring my soul."
+
+"Thanks," Mary said, lightly. "I may as well tell you I've determined
+never to marry Steve, for all your good advice."
+
+"Why?" All the tenseness of her nature rushed to the occasion. This
+was decidedly interesting, since it resembled her own whims. She felt
+almost friendly toward the other woman.
+
+"Because," Mary answered, handing the psychologists another problem
+for a rainy afternoon.
+
+Beatrice nodded, satisfied at the answer and the eternal damnable
+woman's notion inspiring it, for it was just what she would have
+replied in like circumstances. She felt there was nothing more to be
+said about the matter and that Gorgeous Girls and commercial nuns had
+much in common. As usual, Steve was appointed the official blackguard
+of the inevitable triangle!
+
+Going home that night Mary felt that truly the "day was a bitter
+almond." It even began to be dramatically muggy and threatening, in
+keeping with her state of mind--the sort of forced weather that issues
+offstage in roars of thunder the moment the villain begins his
+plotting. She took a street car, having meant to walk and give herself
+time to pull together and adopt the fat smile of a professional
+optimist.
+
+A tired-faced woman, heavily rouged, was talking to another
+tired-faced woman, also rouged. Mary listened because it was a relief
+to listen to someone else besides herself, to realize there were other
+persons in this world occupied with other problems besides a
+commercial nun with a heartache, a tired cave man about to start
+again, and a Gorgeous Girl defeated in no uncertain terms. The whole
+thing was beyond Mary's comprehension just now; as much as the
+graybeards' lack of understanding when they try to Freud the
+schoolboy's mind.
+
+"That's me, too, Mame, all over--and when she tried telling me she was
+a natural blonde, never using lemon juice in even the last rinse
+water--well, when you've been handing out doll dope and baby bluster
+over the counter of a beauty department as long as I have you know
+there ain't no such animal! Good-bye, Mame. I hope you get home
+safe."
+
+"There ain't no such animal," Mary found herself repeating. "No, there
+sure ain't!"
+
+There were no real commercial nuns; it was a premeditated affair
+entirely, merely a comfortable phrase borrowed by the lonesome ones
+unwilling to be called old maids; a big, brave bluff that women have
+adopted during these times of commercial necessity and economic
+stress. Commercial nuns! As foolish as the tales told children of the
+wunks living in the coalbins--as if there ever could be such
+creatures! The reason Mary would not marry Steve was because she,
+Mary, did not want to disappoint him even as the Gorgeous Girl had
+done. She did not want to be all helpmate, practical comrade; she had
+fed herself with this delusion during the years of loneliness. She had
+adopted the veneer, convinced herself that it was true, but she knew
+now that it was false. It had taken a Gorgeous Girl to scratch beneath
+the veneer in true feminine fashion. Mary did wish to be dependent,
+helpless--to have Gorgeous Girl propensities. The cheap phrases of the
+shopwomen kept interrupting her attempts to think of practical detail.
+"There ain't no such animal."
+
+She found Luke wild-eyed and excited, brandishing an evening paper.
+
+"Look what's happened--the O'Valley Leather Company has gone
+under! Won't Constantine help him out? I always said you were the
+mascot----"
+
+"I'd rather not talk about it."
+
+"Why? I always tell you everything."
+
+Mary smiled. Luke was so boyish and square. She felt that particularly
+toward Luke must she keep up the delusion of being a commercial nun,
+content with her part in things.
+
+"It's such a horrid day. I rode on a car that was as crowded as a
+cattle shipment. My head aches. The stenographer has left to be
+married."
+
+"You mean you are not interested about Steve O'Valley?" Luke was not
+to be trifled with regarding the affair.
+
+Mary sank down into the nearest chair. "Of course I am. But what right
+have I to be?" she asked, almost bitterly. "It never pays to be too
+keenly interested."
+
+Luke laid the paper aside. "Mary," he began, his voice very basso
+profondo, "do you like this man?"
+
+Mary gave a little cry. "Stop--all of you--all of you!" Then she began
+sobbing quite as helplessly as the Gorgeous Girl could have done.
+
+Luke stood before her in helpless posture. He might have coped with
+her temper but his reliable tailor-made sister in tears?--Never. As
+she cried he experienced a new sympathy, a delightful sense of
+protectorship. He decided that his wife should cry occasionally--it
+became women.
+
+"See here," he began, shyly, "you mustn't cry about him; it won't do
+any good. If he has failed it isn't your fault. And if you do like
+him--well, you like him. He likes you," he finished with emphasis. "I
+know it. I've known it all along."
+
+"Oh, Luke!" Mary said, helplessly. "Luke!"
+
+He put his arm round her, clumsily. "There--now I wouldn't--please
+don't, it makes me feel awful bad--there's no sense worrying about
+it--you have a lot of good things ahead of you. There, that's the
+girl."
+
+At that moment Luke grew up and became far more manly and self-sufficient
+than all Mary's practical naggings and deeply laid plans could have
+achieved. He felt he must protect his sister; hitherto it had been his
+sister who had protected him. And he watched with pride the way she
+smiled up through her tears in rainbow fashion and patted his cheek,
+calling him a dear. She was a new kind of Mary. Both of them felt the
+better for the happening.
+
+But when Steve came unceremoniously to Mary's apartment that same
+evening, and Luke, very amusing and pathetic in his dignity, met him,
+innocent of the tornado of emotion sweeping about his nice boyish
+self--Mary almost wished the happening had not taken place. For a
+moment she feared that Luke would try to take command of the
+situation. There was something maternal in Mary's wishing Luke to be
+ignorant of the hard things until the ripe time should come. And Luke,
+quite willing to be released, since it was a trifle beyond his powers
+of comprehension, retired to read a magazine and resolve to be ready
+for action at the first sound of a sister's sob!
+
+"I had to come," Steve said, simply. "I've been like the man who never
+took time to walk because he had always been so busy running. I want
+to walk but I don't know how."
+
+Mary shook her head, really shaking it at herself. "Go away, Steve."
+
+"I shall, after a little. But I had to come now. Her aunt said she saw
+you and made quite a time of it. I'm sorry."
+
+"I'm not. We are good friends, in a sense; far better than we have
+ever been before. We found we were in accord--after all."
+
+He looked at her in the same helpless fashion Luke had adopted.
+
+"She will divorce you and marry someone else and continue to be a
+Gorgeous Girl," Mary finished, quietly. "No terrible fate will
+overtake her, nothing occur to rouse or develop her abilities. She
+will remain young and apparently childish until she suddenly
+reaches the stately dowager age overnight. Gorgeous Girls are like
+gypsies--they should either be very young and lissom or old,
+crinkled, and vested with powers of fortune-telling--the middle
+stage is impossible. I realized this morning that I've been fooling
+myself, all the heart in me trying to be 100 per cent efficient,
+when I really want to be a Gorgeous Girl--fluffy, helpless--a
+blooming little idiot. And I'm glad you have come so I can tell you."
+
+"You don't mean that," he corrected.
+
+"Being incurably honest I am bound to tell tales on myself. Yes, I do
+mean it. I'd probably be rushing round for freckle lotion and patent
+nose pins, to give me a Greek-boy effect. I'd take to swathing myself
+in chiffons and have my hair a different tint each season. I think
+every business woman would do the same, too--if she had the chance. We
+have to fool ourselves to keep on going down the broad highway; or
+else we would be sanitarium devotees, neurasthenic muddles. So we
+strike our brave pose and call ourselves superwomen, advanced
+feminists, and all the rest of the feeble rubbish until the right man
+comes along. Sometimes he never comes--so we keep right ahead, growing
+dry as dust at heart and even fooling ourselves. I did. But it took
+your wife to show me my smug conceit, my fancy that I was a bulwark of
+commerce, so proper, so perfect! She showed me that I was just plain
+woman making the best of having been born into the twentieth century!
+There is a Gorgeous Girl in all of us, Steve. So I can't advise or
+comfort or do any of the things I used to--a bag of tricks we women in
+business have adopted to make the heart loneliness the less. Go away
+and make good! That is just what she told you--isn't it? You will
+never believe in any of us again. And I don't know that you should,
+after all. For cave men need Gorgeous Girls."
+
+Steve was laughing down at her. "True--but they need the right
+Gorgeous Girl. I'm glad you have finally told the truth; I always
+suspected it. You have over-emphasized it somewhat--and the woman I
+married was unfairly over-emphasized as well. But in the main, what
+you have said is the truth. I assure you I am twice as glad to have an
+incentive instead of a lady directress. And I want you to be
+helpless--if you can; and fluffy--if you will! Don't you see that you
+are the right Gorgeous Girl--and she was the wrong one--and I'm the
+culprit? Why, Mary, the worst thing you could do would be to descend
+upon me in curl papers under a pink net cap. Even that prospect does
+not frighten me!"
+
+"Are you going away?" she asked, shyly.
+
+"Not far--nothing spectacular or romantic. I'm done with that.
+Beatrice goes West, I believe. She is quite happy. She is going to New
+York first to get her divorce wardrobe. It is her father I pity--he
+has to face another son-in-law," Steve laughed. "I am merely going to
+work for an old and reliable firm--use my nest egg for a house. A
+brown-shingled house, I think, with plain yard and a few ambitious
+shrubs blooming along the walks. I don't know what they will be; I
+leave that to you!"
+
+Luke wondered why he was not called upon for action, but he wondered
+still more as Mary came presently to ask that he tell Steve
+good-night. Her gray eyes were like captured sunrise.
+
+"Luke, dear," she said in as feminine a manner as Beatrice might have
+done, "don't worry about me any more. I'm a queer old sister--but it's
+all coming out all right," kissing him before Steve, to his utter
+confusion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Beatrice sent for Gay before she decided to run down to New York to
+gather up some good-looking things to wear while West. More and more
+the novelty of the situation was appealing to her. She would ship her
+car out and take with her a maid, the Pom, and her aunt, besides three
+trunks of clothes. She also had learned of hot springs that were
+extremely reducing; and of a wonderful lawyer whom several of her
+friends recommended. It had grown very distressing to have a cave man
+prowl about the villa, the eternal disapproval of whatsoever she did,
+then her father's presence got on her nerves. Considering everything
+she was glad to escape, and she welcomed the sympathy and peculiar
+publicity that would be hers. The rôle of an injured woman is almost
+as attractive as that of a romantic parasite. All in all, she was just
+bound to have a good time.
+
+To be sure she thought of Steve working for someone else, making
+one twentieth of his former income, marrying Mary and starting
+housekeeping in eight rooms and a pocket handkerchief of a lawn--and
+she envied them. This was only natural; it would be fun to be in
+Mary's place for a fortnight or so, so she could tell about it
+afterward. And she thought of Mary and of all she had admitted in
+the tenseness of their conversation.
+
+When she returned from New York Gay met her at the train. He carried
+a single long-stemmed white rose, which, he lisped, stood for
+friendship. And Beatrice--three pounds heavier if the truth were
+told--quite languid and easily pleased, looked affectionately upon
+Gay, who was trying to smile his sweetest.
+
+"Of course this is very hard"--feeling it the thing to say--"but
+inevitable."
+
+"I always knew it," he supplemented, feeling that the gates of
+paradise were slowly opening for him. Within a year or so he would not
+even have the pretense at a business. "I understand only too well. May
+I say to my old friend, one whose opinions have swayed me far more
+than she has imagined, that I, too, have experienced a similar
+disillusionment which terminated more tragically?"
+
+"Really?" Beatrice roused from her cushions. "Tell me, Gay, just when
+did you begin to regret having married Trudy?"
+
+The barriers down, Gay began a rapid fire of incidents concerning
+Trudy's gross nature and lack of comprehension, and the patience it
+had required to bear with her. He twirled her diamond ring on his
+finger. Beatrice spied it.
+
+"Why, that setting is just a little different from any I have," she
+said, almost crossly. "I never saw it before."
+
+She held out her hand, and the minor question of a dead wife and a
+discarded husband was put aside until further ennui should overtake
+them.
+
+Aunt Belle opposed the divorce trip more vigorously than any one else
+concerned. It seemed to her naught but a wild panorama of rattlesnakes
+and Indians, with no opportunity for her daily massage. Besides, she
+knew Beatrice's moods, and as time went on, between Constantine's
+ridicule and his daughter's tempers, Aunt Belle was forced to work
+hard to maintain a look of joyous contentment.
+
+But there was nothing else for her to do unless she wished to be taken
+to an old ladies' home. Her brother had said he would be delighted to
+have her away, her pretenses and simpering nothings drove him to
+distraction; and he had at last secured a man attendant who knew how
+to dodge small articles skilfully for the compensation of a hundred
+dollars a month and all he could pilfer. Like Beatrice, Aunt Belle
+regretted that the actual divorce must lack a gorgeous setting; it was
+quite commonplace. But one cannot have everything, and Beatrice had as
+much as hinted that for her second wedding she would use the sunken
+gardens at the Villa Rosa and wear a cloth-of-gold gown without a veil
+but a smart aigrette of gilded feathers.
+
+Beatrice shrank from saying good-bye to her father. It was more than
+her usual dislike of entering the sick room. She had come to realize
+that though her father caused her to be the sort of person she was, he
+himself had remained both real and simple, succeeding by force of this
+fact, and her contact with both Steve and Mary convinced her that she
+did not wish to know real, everyday persons--they had nothing in
+common with her and caused her to be restless and distressed. Gay was
+as wild a mental tonic as she desired.
+
+However, she bent solicitously over him and murmured the usual things:
+"Take best care of yourself--miss you worlds--do be careful--will
+write every day."
+
+Constantine looked up at her, tears in the harsh eyes, which had lost
+their black sparkle. "I'm sorry," he said, in childish fashion, as she
+waited for an equally conventional reply. "Your mother would have
+liked Steve."
+
+"Papa!"--shocked at his lack of fairness--"how horrid!"
+
+"Maybe I was wrong--maybe if your mother had lived it would have been
+different. She would have liked Steve."
+
+Beatrice played her final weapon against Steve's reputation in her
+father's eyes.
+
+"He is going to marry Miss Faithful. He has loved her for a long time.
+Now you see what I have endured."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Oh, quite. He admitted it. So did she." Beatrice knew that Mary's
+declaration against ever marrying Steve would have as much effect as
+to attempt to keep the sun from shining if it so inclined. "I've no
+doubt they will be the model couple of a model village, for if ever
+there was a reformer it is Steve. He never should have been a rich
+man."
+
+"Not at thirty," his father-in-law championed. "So--it's the woman who
+worked for him that won.... I guess it's the way of things, Bea."
+
+"You uphold him?" Her temper was rising.
+
+Constantine shook his head, closing the dull eyes. "I'm out of it
+all," he excused himself. "There's a check for you on the table."
+
+Either pretended or real, he seemed to go to sleep without delay.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some months later Gaylord, very suave in white flannels, came in to
+tell Constantino that he was to meet Beatrice in Chicago, en route
+from the West, and that they were planning to announce their
+engagement shortly after their arrival in Hanover. At which
+Constantine managed to curse Gay in as horrid fashion as he knew how.
+But Gay was quite too happy and secure to mind the reception. Besides,
+there was nothing Constantine could do about it. It was a rather neat
+form of revenge since his daughter would bring into his family the son
+of one of the men he had ruthlessly ruined in his own ascent of the
+ladder.
+
+Gay had done nothing but write letters to Beatrice, in which he copied
+all the smart sayings and quips of everyone else, purporting them as
+original, impoverishing himself for florists' orders and gifts, and
+even taking a desperate run out to see Beatrice ensconced in state in
+a Western town with her tortured aunt and lady's maid and a stout
+squaw to do the housekeeping. Gay knew that all this work would not
+count in vain. So when he proposed to Beatrice, having taken three
+days in which to write the love missive, he knew that he would be
+accepted, and therefore counted Constantine's wrath as a passing
+annoyance.
+
+Everything considered, Beatrice could do no better. She had inclined
+toward a minister as a second husband, she one time said, but her
+chances there were small since she was not a bona-fide widow. Gay
+would endure anything at her hands; he knew no pride, he had no
+purpose in existing save to have a good time, neither did he possess
+annoying theories about life. He was an adept at flattery, and he
+understood Beatrice's sensitiveness about being called stout. With a
+suitor at hand well trained for the part, why waste time looking
+further, she argued.
+
+So the wedding in the sunken gardens with the cloth-of-gold-garbed
+bride was planned for the next season's calendar and there would be
+all the pleasure of talking it over, the entertainments, the new
+clothes, and so on. His father-in-law was paralyzed and his
+aunt-in-law was senile. Gay was bound to be master of all he surveyed
+before long.
+
+Perhaps during the breaking up of his establishment he might be
+unpleasantly reminded of a red-haired girl who had died unmourned and
+whose very ring Beatrice now wore--in exchange for one of hers which
+Gay wore. But he could take an extra cordial if that was the case and
+soon forget. After all, Trudy, like Steve, had been impossible; and
+Gay felt positive that impossible people would not count at judgment
+day.
+
+Likewise Beatrice, who regarded the whole thing as a lark, thought
+sometimes of Steve, who, she understood, was superintendent of a large
+plant some two hundred miles removed from Hanover, and of the time
+when the slightest flicker of her eyes made him glad for all the day,
+or the suggestion of a pout brought him to the level of despair.
+Perhaps she thought, too, of the very few moments as his wife during
+which she had wished things might have been as he wanted. No, not
+really wished--but wondered how it would have been. And of Mary she
+thought a great deal--that was to be expected. No one wrote her about
+Mary, no one seemed to think it would be interesting. The dozen dear
+friends who deluged her with weekly items of local scandal never once
+told her of her wife-in-law, as Gay dubbed her. Therefore she thought
+of her more than she did of any one else--even Gay.
+
+She wondered if Mary was making simple hemstitched things for her
+trousseau; if she would shamelessly marry this divorced man,
+superintendent of a cement works; if she would go live in a
+brown-shingled house and belong to the town social centre and all the
+rest of the woman's-column, bargain-day, sewing-society things. And
+Beatrice knew that Mary would. Moreover, that she would make a
+complete success of so doing. Whereas even now Beatrice merely
+regarded Gay as essential to complete her defeat.
+
+When she reached home, in company with Gay, her aunt, the maid, and an
+armful of flowers, the attendant told them her father was dead. He had
+had a bad turn in the early morning--no pain--just drifted off. Well,
+the only intelligible things he had said were--should he repeat them
+now? Well, the two words he had said over and over again were
+"Steve--Hannah--Hannah--Steve."
+
+So the cloth-of-gold wedding with the sunken-garden setting was
+changed for a wedding at twilight in the conservatory, Beatrice
+dressed in shimmery mauve out of memory to dear papa!
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You have renounced your economic independence and you are now
+approaching the legal-vassal stage," Steve warned Mary as they viewed
+the rooms of the new brown house. "Do you know what it all means?"
+
+"No; probably that is why we women do so," she retorted. "Luke says
+you are bully and everything is fino--and I set quite a store by
+Luke's opinions."
+
+"You'll have green-plush and golden-oak people call on you, I'm
+afraid, and a few who run to Sheraton and crystal goblets. There will
+be funny entertainments and dinner parties where the hostess fries the
+steak and then removes her apron to display her best silk gown."
+
+"I am prepared. And the maid will leave us before the month is over
+and I shall be her understudy. Well, I can. That is something."
+
+"I'm not going to ask permission to smoke--I'm going to sprawl in all
+the chairs and puff away at my leisure."
+
+"Do. I'll try to remember it is good for moths."
+
+"Mary, are you satisfied?" he asked, wistfully.
+
+"Of course. It never does to have it all perfect--to the last detail
+of the wallpaper designs. That never lasts."
+
+She went to lay her head on his shoulder for a brief second, almost
+boyishly darting away and running upstairs to see to some detail in
+which Steve was not concerned.
+
+He went to the side doorway of the house to look out at the other
+houses and yards--pleasant, livable dwellings without romantic
+construction or extravagant details--the homes of the people who keep
+the world moving and mostly turning to the right.
+
+He felt he had earned this brown house--and the woman who was upstairs
+examining the linen-closet capacity. He had neither stolen nor
+bargained for either. It was true there was a tinge of regret, like a
+calm stretch of road without the suggestion of a stirring breeze. One
+cannot chain youth, romance, and Irish-Basque ancestry together and
+let them go breakneck speed without glorious and eternal memories of
+the feat.
+
+Mary realized this--even though she might pretend ignorance of the
+fact. She had reckoned with it before she gave Steve her word. Perhaps
+it, too, had been a factor in stripping off the mask of commercial nun
+and showing him the Gorgeous-Girl propensities. Nothing would content
+him so much as to think of someone dependent upon him, make him
+shoulder responsibility, surround him in a halo of hero worship. Even
+if they both knew this to be a lovely rosy joke--aide-de-camp of
+romance, which even the most practical American woman will not
+forgo--Mary had been wise in telling him the truth. The only time
+women do at all well in fibbing is to each other. Besides, there is a
+vast difference between fibs and rosy jokes!
+
+Steve had earned this, therefore it would be his for all time. And
+though he felt youth had gone from him--the optimistic swashbuckling
+youth which conquered all in his pathway--approaching middle age was
+good to have, and he rejoiced that this mad noonday was over. As he
+looked out at the simple grounds and thought of how sensible Mary was,
+and how sensible was the colour of their modest car, and a hundred
+similar facts--there crossed his mind a vision of the Gorgeous Girl
+like a frail, exotic jungle flower, clad in copper-coloured tulle with
+tiny rusty satin slippers and surrounded by a bodyguard of the
+season's best dancers.
+
+"Why, Stevuns," he almost fancied her light, gay voice saying, "aren't
+you funny!" Then the tiny rusty satin slippers tripped away to the
+latest of waltz tunes.
+
+Well, that was at an end. Perhaps even to Mary, who had come
+downstairs, delighted at finding extra shelf room, Steve would never
+confide these fleeting visions that would cross his mind from time to
+time; also his banished boy heart. Mary would grow a trifle matronly
+of figure, become addicted to severe striped silks, perhaps insist on
+meatless days--and smokeless rooms, for all she said not just now. She
+would dominate a trifle and be on committees, raise a great hue and
+cry as to the right schools for the children. But she would always be
+his Mary Faithful, gray-eyed and incurably honest and loving him
+without pause and without thought of her own splendid self. Truly he
+was a fortunate man, for though there is an abundance of Gorgeous
+Girls these days there are seldom enough Mary Faithfuls to go round.
+
+But he would never tell even his nearest and dearest of the visions.
+This would be Steve's one secret.
+
+And as Steve thought sometimes of the Gorgeous Girl in copper-coloured
+tulle and with a dancing bodyguard, or in white fur coats being
+halfway carried into her motor car, so would the Gorgeous Girl
+sometimes find Gay and his simpering servility quite beside her own
+thoughts. Once more she would see Steve, young and flushed with a
+lover's dream!
+
+The same germ of greatness in these Gorgeous Girls as in their fathers
+frequently causes them to produce good results in the lives of those
+they apparently harm. As in Steve's case--he found his ultimate
+salvation not so much by Mary Faithful's love and service as by
+realizing the Gorgeous Girl's shallow tragedy. With iron wills
+concealed behind childish faces and misdirected energy searching for
+novelty, so the Gorgeous Girls stand to-day a deluxe monument to the
+failure of their adoring, check-bestowing, shortsighted parents. They
+are neither salamanders nor vampires. Steve had not spoken truly. They
+are more chaste and generous of heart than the former, more aloof from
+sordid things than the latter. Wonderful, curious little creatures
+with frail, tempting physiques and virile endurance, playing whatever
+game is handy without remorse and without vicious intent just as long
+as it interests them--in the same careless fashion their fathers
+stoked an engine or became a baker's assistant as long as it proved
+advantageous.
+
+Moreover, they are so apart from the workaday world that it is
+impossible to refrain from thinking of them in unwise fashion--even
+after life has fallen into pleasant channels and the dearly beloved of
+all the world is by one's side. So strong yet so weak, so tantalizing
+yet generous, they have the power to haunt at strange intervals and in
+strange fashion. So it was with Steve. He could not experience a storm
+of definite reproach at the thought of Beatrice--nor bitter hatred.
+Only a vague, lonesome urge, which soon dulled beside the sharp
+commands of common sense.
+
+It was only Mary who was done with visions and could give herself
+unreservedly to the making of her home, the rearing of her family. But
+Mary had realized her vision--not relinquished it.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
+
+GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
+
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