I
Her name was Stella, and she did not like her name. Her hair was quite
lustrous, but she did not like her hair, either, and stood combing
it jerkily before a glass which possessed in its midst one of those
unfortunate waves capable of drawing the face of the beholder into a sad
and sometimes startling distortion. Nor did she take the trouble to keep
out of range of the wave, which proved beyond any reasonable doubt that
things were not going very well with her.
Stella’s face was by no means a discredit to her sex; but a woman is
never seen to the best advantage when at odds with her hair—one of
the few generalities that may fairly be called safe. Her life was a
failure—that worst of all possible failures:—the kind of failure one just
misses grasping. She phrased it all supremely: “I guess I’m about as deep
in the mire as any one could get without being swallowed up entirely.”
Her eye chanced to light upon a cheaply framed photograph. With an
impulsive, half desperately searching air she took it in her hand, and
her regard assumed a passing gleam of softness. What she held was the
likeness of a young man about her own age—apparently around twenty—with a
somewhat groping look. Her inspection became hard, critical, unrelenting.
When she put him down it was with a thrust of annoyance. The young
man tottered a moment on the dizzy edge of a rouge pot and then fell
prostrate. She did not bother to put him on his feet again.
As she reached the dining room, chairs were just being scraped into
business-like adjacency with the table. Stella was really supposed to
come down in time to set the table for breakfast; but now and then,
either despite her high impatience or because of it, she overslept,
which was likely to signify that she had been into the small hours with
a novel. It also meant, in the ruthless way of life’s dispensations,
checks, and balances, that her sister Maud must contrive to set the table
between stirrings and slicings and fryings in the kitchen. Maud was plain
and capable, always pressed for time, very serious about everything. But
she was amiable, and even owned a sense of humour, of a sort—which at any
rate was better than none at all.
Exclamations of delight were in the air, emanating from Aunt Alice.
“Goody—muffins!” She sniffed approvingly. “Some more of your grand
corn muffins, Maud? Or—no, it seems to me—Maud, don’t I get a whiff of
graham?” And now her nose was lifted in sheer transport.
“Corn muffins this morning,” Maud replied, a pleased smile on her
somewhat formless lips.
“Goody again, say I!” It was a zest which seemed really to congratulate
all present.
Stella eyed her aunt dully. God had made her, and she had a good heart: a
wide-chested, cheerful, talkative lady of uncertain years, and a little
taller than Maud’s husband, even when he wore his special high heels. Ted
was far from being a vain man, but he didn’t like to be thought of as
a little man, either, and the cobbler said he’d done that kind of work
before.
Romance? thought Stella, looking unhappily about her. Where was it? She
longed for charm and luxury and brilliant contacts, but her father was in
the harness business.
Well—as he bent low over each sibilant spoonful of orange juice,
wrinkling both eyes a great deal while he delved into the independable
fruit, Frank Meade, stolid and honest and plain, wouldn’t strike any
one as perhaps quite bloated with romance; and yet, abruptly, a wisp of
remorse softened the daughter’s mood a little as she watched him—almost
a little errant burst of spiritual vision. But it faded quickly, and
she was brooding: “He might have been worth millions if he’d switched in
time!” Millions, not for themselves but what they could do to one’s life.
It was a distinction, though perhaps a trifle fine.
Into this sombre reverie broke the quiet voice of her sister: “Stella,
dear, another cup?”
“Such delicious coffee!” endorsed Aunt Alice, who could always be
depended upon to edge in something with the sly apology of the
parenthesis.
Stella suddenly remembered how Irmengarde, in the chapter where they
had afternoon tea somewhere in the Tyrol, waved aside the entreaties of
all her admirers, declining urged dainties on every hand because the
particular romance of her situation recommended an attitude of delicate
ennui. Stella would have liked borrowing the technique of the Tyrolese
mood, but there you were again. This wasn’t a resort in the Tyrol but
just the familiar San Francisco dining room with walls of cracked cream.
Her name was not Irmengarde. She was at war with life, but her cup went
back to be refilled notwithstanding.
After breakfast Maud called out to her husband: “Ted, dear, I wish
you’d bring home one of those new patent wringers with you tonight. The
handle’s come off my old one, and the man at the repair shop said if it
ever came off again he couldn’t fix it.”
“They’re grand!” echoed Aunt Alice over the rail of the banister. “I
think Bert said there were ball bearings inside.”
Ted said all right, his eyes winking behind very bright-looking glasses,
and Maud gave him a capable yet withal affectionate kiss. Aunt Alice,
though afar off now, heard and shouted unquenchably: “Another one for me,
Maud! You’re all right, Teddy! You’re a good boy! ‘Drink to me only with
thine eyes....’” Her voice strode irrepressibly off in song.
Stella half consciously heard too; and, out in the kitchen, her hands in
the eternal suds of dish-washing, it set her thrilling over one of the
golden sentences in that chapter where Irmengarde steals out to view the
ruins by moonlight.
“For one who has kissed as I have kissed,” sighed Irmengarde, “there are
no longer any mysteries in the world!”