I
Frances did not mention this shortcoming of Miss Eppendorfer’s at home,
and it was never openly referred to between the authoress and herself.
But Miss Eppendorfer ceased to be so careful, she was even relieved that
Frances knew her vice and that she didn’t have to live in fear of her
discovering it. The whiskey came openly with the grocery orders, then
vanished into her own room. She was never to be seen drinking it, but
there were many mornings when she couldn’t be awakened till noon, and
when she did get up, she would be in a state that wrung Frankie’s kindly
heart. The poor shaky, weeping thing, moaning about her aching head,
swallowing her dreadful “headache cures,” and waiting in agony till
relief came.... Frances had to sit by her, holding her hand and trying
to quiet and cheer her. She struggled against disgust, but in vain; she
would reach the point where the whole affair seemed intolerable, and she
was determined to go home, and then Miss Eppendorfer would suddenly
change, get up in the morning, dress elaborately and take her “little
pal” out for a day of amusement. She was at such times so ingratiatingly
kind that Frances put aside all thought of leaving her. No doubt these
intervals of hectic excitement were her periods of reform; in fact, she
almost admitted it.
“I have to keep on going,” she said, “to take my mind off things.”
Curious that Frances should find herself so placed, Frances who had been
brought up to regard drunkenness in a man as a bestial crime, and in a
_woman_, a thing almost impossibly awful. She sometimes wondered at
herself, how was it that she didn’t blame Miss Eppendorfer, but looked
upon her failing as if it were a disease? She felt herself very old,
very experienced. In spite of her pity and real unhappiness over the
thing, there was in it a deep, secret satisfaction; it was, she felt,
Knowledge, Life; she was learning, developing. She had so far, far
outgrown Minnie and her grandmother and their standards! She was
tolerant, worldly-wise; there wasn’t, she believed, much more for her to
learn....
The future rather worried her. This couldn’t last forever, and after
this, what? She was not gaining experience that would be of any
practical value to her in any other position. She was not able to save
money; at the end of six months she found herself no better off than
when her career had begun. And she was so ambitious, so passionately
anxious to succeed, to be important and famous. She gave her problem
much serious thought. One thing was certain; she couldn’t and wouldn’t
leave Miss Eppendorfer under the present circumstances; the only thing
was for her to prepare herself, to be ready for something better when
there was a change of some sort. She presented her scheme to Miss
Eppendorfer as tactfully as possible.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, “if I knew how to type better and
faster, and something of shorthand, I’d be ever so much more useful ...
to you, and--and in general ... I wrote to a business school near here,
and I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll take a course there in shorthand
and typing. Three evenings a week, from seven to nine.”
But Miss Eppendorfer protested, begged her to put it off and not to
leave her so much alone. She was afraid of this plan, afraid that she
would, by it, lose this girl she so much needed.
“Just wait a month, dear, won’t you? Till the days are longer?”
It seemed an idiotic reason to Frances, and she looked obstinate.
“Perhaps I could take the course with you,” Miss Eppendorfer suggested,
“I think I’d enjoy it.”
That idea didn’t please Frankie at all; the thought of going to school
with anyone of Miss Eppendorfer’s age, appearance and temperament was
appalling. She imagined what people would say--how they would be
ridiculed. She was obliged to postpone the plan for a time, until she
could think of a different way of presenting it....
Chance gave her an opportunity very soon. One morning the telephone
rang, in itself a rare happening, and she hurried to answer it, as the
authoress was asleep.
“Is this Miss Eppendorfer?” enquired a high, loud voice with an
exaggerated London accent. “Oh, her secretary! Very well! You will
please to tell Miss Eppendorfer that her cousin Kurt Hassler from
Hamburg is here, and would like to call.”
“She’s not awake yet,” Frances explained, “but if you’ll leave your
number----”
“The Ritz,” he replied haughtily. “Find it in the telephone directory. I
am here until one.”
She had scarcely replaced the receiver when Miss Eppendorfer opened the
door of her room and stood smiling absent-mindedly at her.
“I thought I heard the telephone,” she said.
“You did. It was your cousin from Hamburg. He wants to see you.”
Miss Eppendorfer became immensely excited, and insisted upon Frankie’s
calling him up at once.
“I’m too nervous,” she said. “Tell him to come to-night for dinner at
seven.”
He accepted the invitation, and the authoress was delighted.
“I haven’t seen him since he was a child,” she told Frankie, “but I’ve
heard lots about him. He went to Heidelberg, and then he went into his
father’s business and he’s done wonderfully well, they say. He speaks
English, French and Spanish perfectly.”
“Are you a German then?” Frankie asked.
“No; my father was, but I’m not. I’m American through and through. I
can’t even speak German. If Kurt didn’t speak English, I don’t know what
I’d do.”
While she drank her coffee, Miss Eppendorfer ingenuously confided to
Frances her great desire to impress Mr. Hassler.
“You see, his family--- my father’s cousins, over in Germany, always
looked down on us. They were as rude as they could be. You know how
proud those old commercial families are. Why, my dear, Kurt Hassler
would never have _dreamed_ of putting his foot inside my door if I
hadn’t got a name for myself with this writing. So I’m going to show him
that I’m somebody, after all. That I know how to do things _right_!”
Jennie was fetched to wait on the table, and supper was ordered from a
restaurant nearby, with an extravagant variety of wines. Miss
Eppendorfer dressed herself in her very best, and implored Frances to do
the same, but Frances, although expecting a bearded and majestic man in
evening dress, refused to put on any of the authoress’s finery.
“He’s not coming to see me,” she cried, “and, anyway, I’d rather look
like what I am.”
Proud humility! And wasn’t she aware all the time that in her fresh
blouse and blue serge skirt she utterly eclipsed Miss Eppendorfer, she
with her clear brown skin and her beautifully honest eyes, with her
youth and strength and dignity?
She had resented Mr. Hassler’s manner over the telephone and she had
only to take one look at him in person to hate and detest him forever.
He was unexpectedly young, not so old as herself, she imagined, but with
a self-assurance seldom attained by other races this side of forty. He
was handsome enough, but detestably arrogant, a smooth-shaven,
blonde-crested boy with up-turned nose and wide, impudent mouth. He was
stupid and pompous, couldn’t talk about anything but himself and his
“world-export business” as he called it, yet Frances saw that he had wit
enough to take the measure of his cousin. His gallantry was so obviously
mocking that she burned with shame for the poor haggard, painted woman
who gulped it down. It was really torment for her to look on.
Alas, poor Frankie! She had yet to learn of Miss Eppendorfer’s second
great weakness!