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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.