A little spot of red had come into each of her cheeks, and her eyes,
mere slits by now, were fixed on the far-away hills.
She and Harry had been engaged years ago, and she threw him over because
of his jealous nature. But she seemed to have forgotten that.
"Of course," I said, rather startled.
"He was a dear. Sometimes I think he was the most generous soul in the
world. I cannot imagine his fussing about a necklace, or sulking for
hours over a bit of innocent pleasure like my playing a game of pool
after a lot of sleepyheads had gone to bed."
"What time did you and Bill go upstairs?"
"Something after two. We got tired of playing and sat out here and
talked. I knew you wouldn't mind, Clara. You've got too much sense.
Surely a woman ought to be allowed friends, even if she is married."
"Oh, friends!" I retorted. "If she's going to keep her husband a friend
she's got her hands full. Certainly I'm not jealous of you and Bill,
Carrie. But it's not friends most of us want, if you're after the truth.
We want passionate but perfectly respectable, commandment-keeping
lovers!"
Carrie laughed, but her colour died down.
"How silly you are!" she said, and got up. "Maybe we'd like to feel that
we're not clear out of the game, but that's all. We're a little tired of
being taken for granted. I don't want a lover; I want amusement, and if
I'd married Harry Delaney I'd have had it."
"If you'd married him he would have been down there at the pool, showing
off like a goldfish in a bowl, the same as the others."
"He would not. He can't swim," said Carrie, and sauntered away. Somehow
I got the impression that she had been sounding me, and had got what she
wanted. She looked very handsome that night, and wore the necklace.
Someone commented on it at dinner, and Wallie glared across at it.
"It isn't paid for," he said, "and as far as I can see, it never will
be."
Of course, even among old friends, that was going rather far.
Well, the usual thing happened after dinner. The men smoked and argued,
and we sat on the terrace and yawned. When they did come out it was to
say that golf and swimming had made them sleepy, and Jim Elliott went
asleep in his chair. Carrie said very little, except once to lean over
and ask me if I remembered the name of the man Alice Warrington had
thrown over for Ted. When I told her she settled back into silence
again.
The next morning all the husbands were up early and off to the club for
a Sunday's golfing. At ten o'clock a note came in on my breakfast tray
from Carrie.
"Slip on something and come to my room," it said.
When I got there Ida and Alice Warrington were there already, and Carrie
was sitting up in bed, with the same spots of colour I'd seen before. I
curled up on the bed with my hands round my knees.
"Go to it, Carrie," I said. "If it's church, it's too late. If it's a
picnic, it looks like rain."
"Close the door, Ida," said Carrie. "Girls, I'm getting pretty tired of
this."
"Of what?"
"Of dragging the matrimonial ball and chain wherever I go, and having to
hear it clank and swear and sulk, and--all the rest. I'm tired, and so
are all of you. Only I'm more honest."
"It's all rather a mess," Ida said languidly. "But divorce is a mess
too. And, anyhow, what's the use of changing? Just as one gets to know a
man's pet stories, and needn't pretend to laugh at them any more, why
take on a new bunch of stories--or habits?"
"The truth is," said Carrie, ignoring her, "that they have all the good
times. They don't have to look pretty. Their clothes last forever. And
they're utterly selfish socially. You girls know how much they dance
with the married women when there are any débutantes about."
We knew.
"The thing to do," said Carrie, "is to bring them back to a sense of
obligation. They've got us. We stay put. They take us to parties and get
up a table of bridge for us, and go off to a corner with a chit just out
of school, or dance through three handkerchiefs and two collars, and
grumble at paying our bridge losses. Or else they stay at home, and
nothing short of a high explosive would get them out of their chairs."
"Destructive criticism," said Alice Warrington, "never gets anywhere. We
agree with you. There's no discussion. Are you recommending the high
explosive?"
"I am," said Carrie calmly. "I propose to wake them up, and to have a
good time doing it."
Well, as it turned out, it was I who wakened them up, and nobody had a
very good time about it.
"There's just one man a husband is always jealous of," Carrie went on,
and her eyes were slitted as usual. "That's the man his wife could have
married and didn't."
I expect I coloured, for Bill has always been insanely jealous of Roger
Waite, although honestly I never really cared for Roger. We used to have
good times together, of course. You know.
Carrie's plan came out by degrees.
"It will serve two purposes," she said. "It will bring the men to a
sense of responsibility, and stop this silly nonsense about bills and
all that sort of thing. And it will be rather fun. It's a sin to drop
old friends. Does Wallie drop his? Not so you could notice it. Every
time I'm out of town he lives at Grace Barnabee's."
Carrie had asked us all to spend the next week-end with her, but the
husbands were going to New York for the polo game and she had called the
party off. But now it was on again.
"Do you girls remember the house party I had when Wallie was in Cuba,
before we were engaged? We had a gorgeous time. I'm going to repeat it.
It's silly to say lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place. Of
course it does, if one doesn't use lightning rods. Peter Arundel for
Alice, and Roger for you, Clara. Ida, you were in Europe, but we'll let
you in. Who'll you have?"
"Only one?" asked Ida.
"Only one."
Ida chose Wilbur Bayne, and Carrie wrote the notes right there in bed,
with a pillow for a desk, and got ink on my best linen sheets.
"I'm sorry I never thought of it before," she said. "The house party is
bound to be fun, and if it turns out well we'll do it regularly. I'll
ask in a few people for dancing Saturday night, but we'll keep Sunday
for ourselves. We'll have a deliciously sentimental day."
She sat back and threw out her arms.
"Good Lord," she said, "I'm just ripe for a bit of sentiment. I want
about forty-eight hours without bills or butlers or bridge. I'm going to
send my diamond necklace to a safe deposit, and get out my débutante
pearls, and have the wave washed out of my hair, and fill in the necks
of one or two gowns. I warn you fairly, there won't be a cigarette for
any of you."
When I left them they were already talking clothes, and Carrie had a
hand glass and was looking at herself intently in it.
"I've changed, of course," she sighed. "One can't have two children and
not show the wear and tear of maternity. I could take off five pounds
by going on a milk diet. I think I will."
She went on the diet at luncheon that day, and Wallie told her that if
she would cut out heavy dinners and wine her stomach would be her
friend, not her enemy. She glanced at me, but I ignored her. Somehow I
was feeling blue.
The week-end had not been a success, and the girls had not been slow to
tell me about it. The very eagerness with which they planned for the
next week told me what a failure I'd had. Even then the idea of getting
even somehow with Carrie was in the back of my mind.
The men did some trap shooting that afternoon, and during dinner Jim
started a discussion about putting women on a clothes allowance and
making them keep within it.
"I can systematise my business," he said, "but I can't systematise my
home. I'm spending more now than I'm getting out of the mill."
Wallie Smith came up to scratch about that time by saying that his
mother raised him with the assistance of a nursemaid, and no governess
and trained nurse nonsense.
"That is why I insist on a trained nurse and a governess," said Carrie
coldly, and took another sip of milk.
They went home that night, and Bill, having seen them into the motors,
came up on the terrace.
"Bully party, old dear," he said enthusiastically. "Have 'em often,
won't you?"
He sat down near me and put a hand over mine. All at once I was sorry
I'd accepted Carrie's invitation. Not that there would be any harm in
seeing Roger again, but because Bill wouldn't like it. The touch of his
warm hand on mine, the quiet of the early summer night after the noise
that had gone before, the scent of the honeysuckle over the pergola, all
combined to soften me.
"I'm glad you had a good time, Bill," I said after a little silence.
"I'm afraid the girls didn't enjoy it much. You men were either golfing
or swimming or shooting, and there wasn't much to do but talk."
Bill said nothing. I thought he might be resentful, and I was in a
softened mood.
"I didn't really mind your staying downstairs the other night with
Carrie," I said. "Bill, do smell the honeysuckle. Doesn't it remind you
of the night you asked me to marry you?"
Still Bill said nothing. I leaned over and looked at him. As usual he
was asleep.
About the middle of the week Roger Waite called me up. We did not often
meet--two or three times in the winter at a ball, or once in a season at
a dinner. Ida Elliott always said he avoided me because it hurt him to
see me. We had been rather sentimental. He would dance once with me,
saying very little, and go away as soon as he decently could directly
the dance was over. Sometimes I had thought that it pleased him to fancy
himself still in love with me, and it's perfectly true that he showed no
signs of marrying. It was rather the thing for the débutantes to go
crazy about Roger. He had an air of knowing such a lot and keeping it
from them.
"Why don't you keep him around?" Ida asked me once. "He's so ornamental.
I'm not strong for tame cats, but I wouldn't mind Roger on the hearthrug
myself."
But up to this time I'd never really wanted anybody on the hearthrug but
Bill. If I do say it, I was a perfectly contented wife until the time
Carrie Smith made her historic effort to revive the past. "Let sleeping
dogs lie" is my motto now--and tame cats too.
Well, Roger called me up, and there was the little thrill in his voice
that I used to think he kept for me. I know better now.
"What's this about going out to Carrie Smith's?" he said over the phone.
"That's all," I replied. "You're invited and I'm going."
"O!" said Roger. And waited a moment. Then:
"I was going on to the polo," he said, "but of course--What's wrong with
Bill and polo?"
"He's going."
"Oh!" said Roger. "Well, then, I think I'll go to Carrie's. It sounds
too good to be true--you, and no scowling husband in the offing!"
"It's--it's rather a long time since you and I had a real talk."
"Too long," said Roger. "Too long by about three years."
That afternoon he sent me a great box of flowers. My conscience was
troubling me rather, so I sent them down to the dinner table. Whatever
happened I was not going to lie about them.
But Bill only frowned.
"I've just paid a florist's bill of two hundred dollars," he grumbled.
"Cut out the American beauties, old dear."
It was not his tone that made me angry. It was his calm assumption that
I had bought the things. As if no one would think of sending me flowers!
"If you would stop sending orchids to silly débutantes when they come
out," I snapped, "there would be no such florist's bills."
One way or another Bill got on my nerves that week. He brought Wallie
Smith home one night to dinner, and Wallie got on my nerves too. I could
remember, when Wallie and Carrie were engaged and we were just married,
how he used to come and talk us black in the face about Carrie.
"How's Carrie, Wallie?" I said during the soup.
"She's all right," he replied, and changed the subject. But later in the
evening, while Bill was walking on the lawn with a cigar, he broke out
for fair.
"Carrie's on a milk diet," he said apropos of nothing. "If she stays on
it another week I'm going to Colorado. She's positively brutal, and she
hasn't ordered a real dinner for anybody for a week."
"Really!" I said.
He got up and towered over me.
"Look here, Clara," he said; "you're a sensible woman. Am I fat? Am I
bald? Am I a doddering and toothless venerable? To hear Carrie this past
few days you'd think I need to wear overshoes when I go out in the
grass."
I rather started, because I'd been looking at Bill at that minute and
wondering if he was getting his feet wet. He had only pumps on.
"It isn't only that she's brutal," he said, "she has soft moments when
she mothers me. Confound it, I don't want to be mothered! She's taken
off eight pounds," he went on gloomily. "And that isn't the worst." He
lowered his voice. "I found her crying over some old letters the other
day. She isn't happy, Clara. You know she could have married a lot of
fellows. She was the most popular girl I ever knew."
Well, I'd known Carrie longer than he had, and of course a lot of men
used to hang round her house because there was always something to do.
But I'd never known that such a lot of them made love to Carrie or
wanted to marry her. She was clever enough to hesitate over Wallie, but,
believe me, she knew she had him cinched before she ran any risk.
However:
"I'm sure you've tried to make her happy," I said. "But of course she
was awfully popular."
I'm not so very keen about Carrie, but the way I felt that week, when it
was a question between a husband and a wife, I was for the wife. "Of
course," I said as Bill came within hearing distance, "it's not easy,
when one's had a lot of attention, to settle down to one man, especially
if the man is considerably older and--and settled."
That was a wrong move, as it turned out. For Bill, who never says much,
got quieter than ever, and announced, just before he went to bed, that
he'd given up the polo game. I was furious. I'd had one or two simple
little frocks run up for Carrie's party, and by the greatest sort of
luck I'd happened on a piece of flowered lawn almost exactly like one
Roger used to be crazy about.
For twenty-four hours things hung in the balance. Bill has a hideous
way of doing what he says he'll do. Roger had sent more flowers--not
roses this time, but mignonette and valley lilies, with a few white
orchids. It looked rather bridey. It would have been too maddening to
have Bill queer the whole thing at the last minute.
But I fixed things at bridge one night by saying that I thought married
people were always better off for short separations, and that I was
never so fond of Bill as when he'd been away for a few days.
"Polo for me!" said Bill.
And I went out during my dummy hand and telephoned Carrie.
I hope I have been clear about the way the thing began. I feel that my
situation should be explained. For one thing, all sorts of silly stories
are going round, and it is stupid of people to think they cannot ask
Roger and me to the same dinners. If Bill would only act like a
Christian, and not roar the moment his name is mentioned, there would be
a chance for the thing to die out. But you know what Bill is.
Well, the husbands left on Saturday morning, and by eleven o'clock Ida,
Alice and I were all at Carrie's. The change in her was simply
startling. She looked like a willow wand. She'd put her hair low on her
neck, and except for a touch of black on her eyelashes, and of course
her lips coloured, she hadn't a speck of makeup on. She'd taken the
pearls out of her ears, too, and she wore tennis clothes and flat-heeled
shoes that made her look like a child.
She was sending the children off in the car as we went up the drive.
"They're off to mother's," she said. "I'll miss them frightfully, but
this is a real lark, girls, and I can't imagine anything more killing to
romance than small children."
She kissed the top of the baby's head, and he yelled like a trooper.
Then the motor drove off, and, as Alice Warrington said, the stage was
set.
"Get your tennis things on," Carrie said. "The men will be here for
lunch."
We said with one voice that we wouldn't play tennis. It was too hot. She
eyed us coldly.
"For heaven's sake," she said, "play up. Nobody asked you to play
tennis. But if you are asked don't say it's too hot. Do any of the
flappers at the club ever find it too hot to play? Sprain an ankle or
break a racket, but don't talk about its being too violent, or that
you've given it up the last few years. Try to remember that for two days
you're in the game again, and don't take on a handicap to begin with."
Well, things started off all right, I'll have to admit that, although
Carrie looked a trifle queer when Harry Delaney, getting out of the
motor that had brought them from the station, held out a baby's rattle
to her.
"Found it in the car," he said. "How are the youngsters anyhow?"
"Adorable!" said Carrie, and flung the rattle into the house.
Roger came straight to me and took both my hands.
"Upon my word, Clara," he said, "this is more luck than I ever expected
again. Do you remember the last time we were all here together?"
"Of course I do." He was still holding my hands and I felt rather silly.
But the others had paired off instantly and no one was paying any
attention.
"I was almost suicidal that last evening. You--you had just told me, you
know."
I withdrew my hands. When a man is being sentimental I like him to be
accurately sentimental. It had been a full month after that house party,
at a dance Carrie gave, that I had told him of my engagement to Bill.
However, I said nothing and took a good look at Roger. He was wonderful.
Why is it that married men lose their boyishness, and look smug and
sleek and domesticated almost before the honeymoon is over? Roger stood
there with his hat in his hand and the hot noon sun shining on him. And
he hadn't changed a particle, except that his hair was grey over his
ears and maybe a bit thinner. He was just as eager, just as boyish,
just as lean as he'd ever been. And positively he was handsomer than
ever.
Bill is plain. He is large and strong, of course, but he says himself
his face must have been cut out with an axe. "Rugged and true," he used
to call himself. But lately, in spite of golf, he had put on weight.
Well, to get on.
Luncheon was gay. Everyone sat beside the person he wanted to sit
beside, and said idiotic things, and Peter Arundel insisted on feeding
Alice's strawberries to her one by one. Nobody talked bills or the high
cost of living. Roger is a capital _raconteur_, and we laughed until we
wept over his stories. I told some of Bill's stock jokes and they went
with a hurrah. At three o'clock we were still at the table, and when
Carrie asked the men if they wanted to run over to the Country Club for
a couple of hours of golf Wilbur Bayne put the question to a vote and
they voted "No" with a roar.
I remember that Harry Delaney said a most satisfactory thing just as
luncheon was over.
"It's what I call a real party," he said. "After a man is thirty or
thereabouts he finds débutantes still thrilling, of course, but not
restful. They're always wanting to go somewhere or do something. They're
too blooming healthy. The last week-end I spent I danced until 4 A. M.
and was wakened at seven-thirty by a fair young flower throwing gravel
through my open window and inviting me to a walk before breakfast!"
"Anyone seen about the place before eleven to-morrow morning," said
Carrie, "will be placed under restraint. For one thing, it would make
the servants talk. They're not used to it."
So far so good. I'll confess freely that if they'd let me alone I'd
never have thought of getting even. But you know Carrie Smith. She has
no reserves. And she had to tell about my party and the way the husbands
behaved.
"Don't glare, Clara," she said. "Your house is nice and your food and
drink all that could be desired. But it was not a hilarious party, and
I'll put it up to the others."
Then and there she told about the swimming and the golf and the
knitting. The men roared. She exaggerated, of course. Bill did not go to
sleep at dinner. But she made a good story of it, and I caught Roger's
eye fixed on me with a look that said plainly that he'd always known I'd
made a mistake, and here was the proof.
We went out into the garden and sat under a tree. But soon the others
paired off and wandered about. Roger and I were left alone, and I was
boiling.
"Don't look like that, little girl," said Roger, bending toward me. "It
hurts me terribly to--to think you are not happy."
He put a hand over mine, and at that moment Alice Warrington turned from
a rosebush she and Peter were pretending to examine, and saw me. She
raised her eyebrows, and that gave me the idea. I put my free hand over
Roger's and tried to put my soul into my eyes.
"Don't move," I said. "Hold the position for a moment, Roger, and look
desperately unhappy."
"I am," he said. "Seeing you again brings it all back. Are they looking?
Shall I kiss your hand?"