After that evening everything was changed, Miss Eppendorfer herself a
quite different person. She was as good-tempered, as kindly as ever, but
so silly that Frankie’s own amiability began to wear thin. She wrote no
more, all her talk was of clothes, of hair dressers, of manicures. She
would spend all morning sitting at her dressing table, polishing her
nails and “jabbering,” as her secretary mentally called her talking. She
was full of the affectations of a happy young girl, was impulsive,
whimsical, even pouted. And for whom but that obnoxious little
Hamburger, young enough to be her son!
He called every evening, and made it plain to Frankie that he wanted to
be alone with his cousin. So she withdrew to her bedroom and tried to
read, to ignore that light, hysterically gay voice answering his
impudent compliments.
“Can’t she see?” Frankie used to ask herself, almost in tears. “Doesn’t
she know he’s laughing at her? Oh, what an idiot she’s making of
herself, poor old thing!”
He and Frances hated each other. She stared at him with cold contempt,
he looked her up and down insolently; they never spoke unless it
couldn’t be avoided. Unfortunately Frances had to listen to a great deal
about him from Miss Eppendorfer, how successful and brilliant he was in
business, how supremely well-educated, how fastidious and aristocratic,
how irresistible to the fair sex. He told her about his “affairs” and
she insisted upon telling Frankie, although the latter said bluntly
enough that she wasn’t interested. It was necessary that she should be
shown what a remarkable conquest Miss Eppendorfer had made. She was
forced to hear about the Russian princess, the awfully exclusive
Parisienne, and above all about the eminent and very chic Damen in Wien.
The colossal success he had had! Frances had either to consider him a
liar, or the ladies on the continent of Europe as pitifully lacking in
taste.
He very soon began coming to dinner every night, and Miss Eppendorfer
went to great trouble to secure a cook who was not only a German, but a
German from the only correct part of Germany for cooks to inhabit. She
extorted big wages and made life wretched with her shrewishness, but her
delicacies were supposed to atone for all this. Expenses mounted
steadily; Frances had not imagined that Miss Eppendorfer had so much
money. She bought new clothes continually, and flowers, and very
expensive wines. Mr. Hassler was not absent for a single night for two
months after the coming of the German cook, but not once did he invite
his cousin to go anywhere with him, or did he bring her flowers or
sweets.
Frances could not comprehend this thing; she thought she did, but she
didn’t, in the least. It was the sort of affair not related in romantic
novels; there was nothing romantic about it. It might be classified as a
“love affair,” although it would have been confoundedly hard to find any
love in it.... Frankie simply thought that Miss Eppendorfer was “silly”
about the young man, and anxious to impress him, and that he was
attracted by the good dinners.
Her first real suspicions awoke when she was checking up the stubs in
the authoress’s cheque book, which she did every month when the vouchers
came back from the bank. And she saw, no less than five times, cheques
made out to “Kurt Hassler” for fifty dollars, sixty dollars, up to a
hundred. It gave her a vague feeling of uneasiness, which she couldn’t
shake off, although she assured herself that it was all “business.”
Then she and Miss Eppendorfer had the first of their quarrels. The cook
wanted a day off, and Miss Eppendorfer gaily asked Frankie if she
wouldn’t cook one of her dear little suppers for “Kurtie.” Frances
flushed.
“Why don’t you go to a restaurant?” she suggested.
“Kurtie’s so sick of restaurants. I told him what heavenly things you
used to fix up for me, and he said he’d like to see what you could do.
He’s----”
“I’m sorry,” said Frances, “but I’d rather not.”
“My dear! Please! I’ve practically promised.”
“I can’t help it. I _couldn’t_.”
“But _why_?”
Frances looked at her indignantly.
“I wouldn’t cook for _that man_!” she said, severely.
“What is your objection to him, may I ask?” enquired Miss Eppendorfer,
with sudden frigidity.
“I’d rather not say.”
“I insist.”
“I’m not going to say. It has nothing to do with the case, anyway. I
don’t mind--I _never_ mind doing things for _you_. But ... I should
think you’d know better than to ask me to cook for your guests. I’m
supposed to be your secretary, Miss Eppendorfer, not your servant.”
She was startled by the expression on Miss Eppendorfer’s face.
“A hell of a secretary you are!” she screamed. “You don’t know a damned
thing. You’re no more use to me than a parrot. You take my money and
never do a stroke of work. You’re as lazy as a nigger.” And much, much
more, of abuse that grew fouler and fouler, most of it unintelligible to
the girl. She stood motionless, white as a sheet, dumb with horror, her
own little anger swept away on this violent torrent. She never forgot
the scene, or the words.
“Oh!” she whispered. “Oh!... How terrible!... Oh, God, how terrible!”
For she had a dreadful feeling of helplessness, of being in a world
where her dignity was of no avail. She cried forlornly for Minnie and
her grandmother, even for her mother, dead a score of years.
She had packed her trunk and was absolutely determined to go home that
night when Miss Eppendorfer came to the door, imploring to be let in.
She, too, was in tears, streaming with tears, and she went down on her
knees to Frances.
“Forgive me!” she cried. “Forgive me! Frances, darling, you know how
terribly nervous I am! Don’t be too hard on me. I can’t live without
you!”
She was so dreadfully upset that Frances had to get her to bed and give
her a dose of some powerful sedative she used for her “nerve attacks,”
and telephoned to Hassler not to come. And in the end she agreed not to
go home.
But she remained very grave and thoughtful. She went out to supper at a
little French table d’hôte nearby, came back and went to bed, without
seeing Miss Eppendorfer again.
She was waked up late that night, though, by her. The poor creature was
crying again, standing by Frankie’s bed.
“Oh, Frances!” she moaned, “I’m so wretched! I wish I were dead!”
Frances asked what was the matter.
“Kurt was so nasty to me,” she sobbed. “I rang him up after you’d gone
out, and he came. But he wouldn’t stay a minute. He just looked at the
supper and went away. I _tried_! I had sardines and caviare and fruit,
all fixed in a dainty way.... Oh, _Frances_!”
Her voice rose to a shriek that alarmed Frances.
“Don’t get excited!” she entreated. “Just tell me, quietly, all about
it. First let me close the window.”
It was an incoherent tale; he had told her that she didn’t know how to
dress, that he wouldn’t be seen in a public place with her, that at
_her_ age she shouldn’t try to wear pink. Told her she looked vulgar.
That he couldn’t see a trace in her conversation of the brains he
imagined were required in novel writing.
Frances was exasperated.
“Why in the world do you bother with him!” she cried. “He’s--I’m sure
you’re deceived in him. Why don’t you let him go?”
Miss Eppendorfer began to weep anew.
“I love him!” she declared. And seeing Frankie’s shocked face, she
added, with humane motive, “We’re going to be married!”
Frances believed it.