Grace addressed herself sincerely to the business of bringing all the
cheer possible to the home circle. She overcame her annoyance at being
obliged to recount the details of her work, realizing that her mother
spent her days at home and save for the small affairs of her club had
little touch with the world beyond her dooryard. Ethel’s days in the
insurance office were much alike and she lacked Grace’s gift for making
a good story out of a trifling incident. Even Mr. Durland enjoyed
Grace’s account of the whims and foibles of the women she encountered
at Shipley’s. Grace reasoned that so long as she lived at home it would
be a mistake not to make the best of things; but even in her fits of
repentance she had not regretted her assertion of the right to go and
come unquestioned.
In the week following she left the house on two evenings saying merely
that she was going out. On one of these occasions she returned a
book to the public library; on another she walked aimlessly for an
hour. These unexplained absences were to determine whether her new
won liberty was really firmly established. Nothing was said either
by her mother or Ethel, though it was clear that they were mystified
by her early return, though not to the point of asking where she had
been. On a third evening she announced at the table that she had
earned a good bonus that day and would celebrate by taking them all
to the vaudeville. Mrs. Durland and Ethel gave plausible excuses
for declining, but not without expressing their appreciation of the
invitation in kind terms, and Grace and her father set off alone.
In her cogitations Grace was convinced that nothing short of a miracle
could ever improve materially the family fortunes. They had the house
free of encumbrance, but it needed re-roofing, and the furnishings
were old and dingy. Mrs. Durland had worked out a budget by which to
manage the family finances, and it was clear enough to Grace that
what she and Ethel earned would just about take care of the necessary
running expenses. Mrs. Durland had received for many years an income
of five hundred dollars a year from her father’s estate, and this
Grace learned had always been spent on the family. The last payment
had been put away, Mrs. Durland explained to her daughters, to help
establish Roy after he completed his law course. It was impressed upon
Grace constantly that all the hopes of bettering the family conditions
centered in Roy. Ethel shared, though in less degree, her mother’s
confidence in the son of the house. Grace kept silent when Roy’s
prospects were discussed, feeling that it would serve no purpose to
express her feeling that Roy had no special talent for the law, and
even if he had the Durlands were without family or business connections
that could possibly assist him in establishing himself.
X
Grace’s meeting with Bob Cummings served to sharpen her sense of
social differentiations. Her mother had always encouraged the idea
that the Durlands were a family of dignity, entitled to the highest
consideration; but stranded as they were in a neighborhood that had
no lines of communication with polite society, Mrs. Durland now rarely
received an invitation even to the houses of her old friends. Grace’s
excursions in social science had made her aware of the existence of
such a thing as class consciousness; but she had never questioned that
she belonged to the favored element. The thought assailed her now that
as a wage-earning girl she had a fixed social status from which there
was little likelihood she would ever escape. The daughters of prominent
families she waited on at Shipley’s were no better looking, no more
intelligent and had no better social instincts than she possessed; but
she was as completely shut off from any contact with them as though
she were the child of a Congo chieftain. With all her romanticism she
failed to picture the son of one of the first families making her
acquaintance and introducing her to his family as the girl he meant to
marry. Several young men with whom she became acquainted in Shipley’s
had asked her to go to dances, or for Sunday drives. Irene sniffed when
Grace reported these overtures.
“Oh, they’re nice fellows; but what have they got to offer? They’re
never going to get anywhere. You can’t afford to waste your time on
them.”
However, Grace accepted one of these invitations. The young man took
her to a public dance hall where the music was good, but the patrons
struck her as altogether uninspiring; and she resented being inspected
by a police matron. She danced with her escort all evening, and then
they went to a cafeteria for sandwiches and soda water.
Irene had warned Grace that such young fellows were likely to prove
fresh; that they always expected to kiss a girl good-night, and
might even be insulting; but this particular young man was almost
pathetically deferential. Grace was ashamed of herself for not inviting
him to call, but she shrank from encouraging his further attentions; he
might very easily become a nuisance.
Again, she went to Rosemary Terrace, a dance and supper place on the
edge of town, in company with a young man who carried a bottle on his
hip to which he referred with proud complacency, as though it were the
symbol of his freedom as an American citizen. The large dance hall
was crowded; the patrons were clearly the worse for their indulgence
in the liquor carried by their escorts; the dancing of many of the
visitors was vulgar; the place was hot and noisy and the air heavy with
tobacco smoke. Grace’s young man kept assuring her that the Rosemary
was the sportiest place in town; you didn’t see any dead ones there.
His desire to be thought a sport would have been amusing if he hadn’t
so strenuously insisted upon explaining that he was truly of the great
company of the elect to whom the laws of God and man were as nothing.
When Grace asked to be taken home he hinted that there were other
places presumably even less reputable, to which they might go. But he
did not press the matter, when, reaching the Durland gate, he tried
to kiss her and she, to mark the termination of their acquaintance,
slapped him.
These experiences were, she reflected, typical of what she must look
forward to unless she compromised with her conscience and accepted
Irene’s philosophy of life.
She had replied immediately to Trenton’s letter from St. Louis with
a brief note which she made as colorless as possible. She knew that
it was for her to decide whether to see more of him or drop the
acquaintance. He was not a man to force his attentions upon any young
woman if he had reason to think them unwelcome. Hearing nothing from
him for several days she had decided that he had settled the matter
himself when she received a note explaining that he had been very busy
but would start East the next day. He hoped she would dine with him on
Thursday night and named the Indianapolis hotel where her reply would
reach him.
“Don’t turn him down!” exclaimed Irene when Grace told her Trenton was
coming. “He wouldn’t ask you if he didn’t want you. Tommy skipped for
New York last night so it’s a safe bet that Ward’s stopping on purpose
to see you.”
“I don’t know--” began Grace doubtfully.
“Oh, have a heart! There’s no harm in eating dinner with a married man
in a hotel where you’d get by even if all your family walked in and
caught you! Of course Tommy can’t appear with me at any public place
here at home, but it’s different with you and Ward. He doesn’t know a
dozen people in town.”
“I wouldn’t want to offend him,” Grace replied slowly, a prey to
uncertainty; but she withheld her acceptance until the morning of the
day of Trenton’s arrival.