Grace got excused from the store at five o’clock on Tuesday to give
herself ample time to prepare for the dinner.
“That’s the prettiest gown you ever wore, dear,” Mrs. Durland exclaimed
when Grace was fully arrayed. “I’m glad you didn’t have your hair
marcelled; that little natural wave is prettier than anything the
hairdresser could do. Carried straight away from your forehead as
you’ve got it gives just the right effect. I guess Miss Reynolds
needn’t be ashamed of you. You’ve got the look of breeding, Grace;
nobody could fail to see that. Just be careful not to talk too much,
not even if Mrs. Trenton says brash things you feel like disputing
with her. And if you get a chance to speak to Judge Sanders without
appearing to drag it in you might say you’re the great-granddaughter of
Josiah B. Morley. Little things like that do count, you know.”
“Yes, of course,” Grace assented, as she studied the hang of her skirt
before the mirror.
Ethel came in and seated herself on the bed to watch Grace’s
preparations. Osgood Haley had walked home with her and she was in the
mood of subdued exaltation to which the young man’s company frequently
brought her. She apologized to her mother for being late; she and
Osgood had prolonged the walk by taking a turn in the park but she
would make up to her for the delay by doing all of the supper work.
“That dress really is becoming to you, Grace,” she said in a fervor of
magnanimity. “It sets you off beautifully. You must tell us all about
the party. I hope you won’t let anything I said about Mrs. Trenton
spoil the evening for you. You know I’m always glad when any happiness
comes to you.”
“Thank you, Ethel; I guess I’ll live through the ordeal,” said Grace
from her dressing table where she had seated herself to administer
the final touches to her toilet. Zealous to be of service, Ethel and
her mother watched her attentively, offering suggestions to which
Grace in her absorption murmured replies or ignored. Ethel brought
from her room a prized lace-bordered handkerchief which she insisted
that Grace should carry. Her generosity was spoiled somewhat by the
self-sacrificing air with which it was tendered. To help others was
really the great joy of life, Ethel quoted Haley as saying, adding
that she constantly marveled at Osgood’s clear vision of the true way
of life. Grace accepted the handkerchief, with difficulty concealing a
smile at the change in Ethel wrought by Haley’s talk.
The car Miss Reynolds had sent was at the door and Mrs. Durland and
Ethel went down to see Grace off. They gave her a final looking over
before helping her into her coat. The veil she had drawn over her head
required readjustment; it was a serious question whether there was not
an infinitesimal spot on one of her slippers.
“Oh, they’ve got to take me as I am!” said Grace, finally. “There isn’t
time to dress all over again.”
“I’ll wait up for you, dear,” said Mrs. Durland. “I’ll be anxious to
know all about the dinner.”
Grace was again torn by doubts as the car bore her swiftly toward Miss
Reynolds’s. She tried to convince herself that she was not in the least
interested in Mrs. Trenton; that she was no more concerned with her
than she would have been with any other woman she might meet in the
house of a friend. But these attempts to minimize her curiosity as
to Trenton’s wife failed miserably. It was impossible to think of the
meeting with her lover’s wife as a trifling incident. The newspaper
portraits of Mrs. Trenton rose vividly before her and added to her
discomfort. She feared that she might in some way betray herself. When
the car stopped she felt strongly impelled to postpone her entrance
in the hope of quieting herself by walking round the block; but to be
late to a dinner was, she knew, an unpardonable sin. Summoning all her
courage she ran up the walk to the door, which opened before she could
ring.
“First room to the right upstairs,” said the colored butler.
The white maid helped her off with her wrap and stood by watching her
with frank admiration as she surveyed herself before a long mirror. In
Grace’s perturbed state of mind the presence of the girl was a comfort.
“Do I look all right?” she asked.
“You look lovely, Miss; just like a beautiful picture.”
“Oh, thank you!” said Grace, smiling gratefully into the girl’s eyes.
“Am I very late?”
“No, Miss, Dr. and Mrs. Ridgely haven’t come yet.”
A clock on the mantle began striking the half hour as Grace left the
room. She went down slowly with a curious sense of being an unbidden
guest in a strange house.
From the stair she caught a glimpse of a man in evening dress in the
room below. She had attended few functions in her life where men wore
evening dress and the staring expanse of shirt front intensified her
sense of breathing an alien atmosphere.
As she stood in the drawing room doorway the figures within dimmed and
she put out her hand to steady herself. Then the wavering mists that
blurred her vision cleared as Miss Reynolds came quickly forward and
caught her hands.
“My dear child, I didn’t hear you come down! I’m glad to see you,--even
relieved!” she added in a whisper. “How perfectly adorable you are!”
Grace had not dared lift her eyes to the group of guests who stood
across the room talking animatedly, and as Miss Reynolds, with her arm
about Grace’s waist, moved toward them she was arrested by a young man
who had just entered and stood waiting to present himself.
“Oh, Mr. Atwood! Miss Durland, Mr. Atwood.” Jimmie Atwood put out his
hand, smiling joyfully.
“Good luck, I call this! It’s perfectly bully to meet you again, Miss
Durland.”
“You two are acquainted?” Miss Reynolds exclaimed delightedly. “That’s
splendid, for you’re to take Miss Durland in.”
“Mr. Atwood’s equal to the most difficult situations,” said Grace,
meeting his eyes, which were responding to the mirth in her own as both
recalled the night they had met at McGovern’s.
“Ah! You have a secret of some kind!” said Miss Reynolds. “Far be it
from me to intrude but you’ve got to meet the other guests.”
Jimmie Atwood’s appearance had lessened the tension for Grace and quite
composedly she found herself confronting a tall slender woman who
stepped forward to meet the newcomers.
“Mrs. Trenton, Miss Durland--and Mr. Atwood.”
Mrs. Trenton gave each a quick little nod, murmuring:
“I’m very glad, indeed.”
The Ridgelys at this moment arrived followed by two unattached men.
Townsend, a young physician who was looked upon as a coming man, and
Professor Grayling, whose courses in sociology Grace had taken at the
University. He was, she learned, a remote connection of Miss Reynolds’s
and had been summoned from Bloomington to add to the representative
character of the company.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me you knew Miss Reynolds?” Grayling
demanded, as he and Grace were left to themselves for a moment during
the progress of further introductions.
“Oh, I didn’t meet her till after I left college. I know why you’re
invited; you’re here to do the heavy high-brow work! I remember that
you once expressed views on the writings of the guest of honor.”
“Did I? If I become quarrelsome tonight throw a plate or something at
me.” Grace had always admired Grayling; he was saying now that she had
been his star student and that he missed her from his classes.
“I’d really counted on making you an instructor in my department but
you left without saying good-bye; and here I find you launched upon a
high social career--it’s a distinct loss to social science!”
“If you knew just where and how I met Miss Reynolds you wouldn’t think
me in danger of becoming a social butterfly!” laughed Grace, her
assurance mounting. Grayling was smiling quizzically into her eyes; he
would never know how grateful she was for these few minutes with him.
The rest of the company were grouped about Mrs. Trenton, who had lately
been in Washington and was expressing her opinions, which were not
apparently complimentary, of the public men she had met there.
“I’m Number Eighteen at Shipley’s,” said Grace, finding that Grayling
was giving her his complete attention. “Miss Reynolds was my first
customer.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “You’re collecting data! I see it all! There will
be a treatise, perhaps a large tome, on your experiences in the haunts
of trade. Perhaps you’ll allow me to write the preface. We thought down
at the University you’d got tired of us, but I see that you’d grown
beyond our feeble aid. I’m infinitely relieved!”
“Stop kidding me!” said Grace, glancing about to make sure they were
not overheard. “I’m a shop girl, trying to earn an honest living.”
Atwood came up as dinner was announced and when they reached the table
Grace found that Grayling was to sit at her left. Mrs. Trenton’s place
was a little to her right on the further side, an arrangement that made
it possible for Grace to observe her without falling within the direct
line of her vision.
Grace, turning to Atwood, who frankly declared his purpose to
monopolize her, found it possible to study at leisure the woman about
whom she had so constantly speculated. Mrs. Trenton was, she surmised,
nearly the forty years to which Trenton himself confessed and there
was in her large gray-blue eyes something of the look of weariness to
be found in the eyes of people who live upon excitement and sensation.
Her hair had a reddish tinge and the gray had begun to show in it. She
bore every mark which to a sophisticated feminine inspection announces
that a woman has a particular care for her appearance. She gave an
impression of smoothness and finish. She wore a string of pearls and
on her left hand a large pearl set in diamonds, but no wedding ring,
a fact which Grace interpreted as signifying that in this fashion
the author of “Clues to a New Social Order,” let the world know her
indifference to the traditional symbol by which womankind advertise
their married state. She found herself wondering whether Ward Trenton
had given his wife the necklace or the ring with the diamond-encircled
pearl. Mrs. Trenton’s gown had the metropolitan accent; it was the
product unmistakably of one of those ultra smart New York dressmakers
whose advertisements Grace had noted from time to time in magazines for
women.
Mrs. Trenton had entered into a discussion with Dr. Ridgely of the
industrial conditions created by the war; and she was repeating what
some diplomat had said to her at a dinner in Washington. Her head
and shoulders moved almost constantly as she talked, and her hands
seemed never idle, playing with her beads or fingering a spoon she had
unconsciously chosen as a plaything. She laughed frequently, a quick,
nervous, mirthless little laugh, while her eyes stared vacantly, as
though she were not fully conscious of what she said or what was being
said to her. She spoke crisply, with the effect of biting off her
words. Grace was interested in her mastery of the broad _a_, which
western folk profess to scorn but nevertheless envy in pilgrims from
the fabled East. Her voice and enunciation reminded Grace of the speech
an English woman who had once lectured at the University.
“Oh, that!”
This was evidently a pet expression, uttered with a shrug and a lifting
of the brows. It meant much or nothing as the hearer chose to take
it. Grace had read much about the neurotic American woman and Mrs.
Trenton undoubtedly expressed the type. It was difficult to think of
her as Ward Trenton’s wife. The two were irreconcilably different.
Grace’s mind wearied in the attempt to correlate them, but she gained
ease as the moments sped by. By the time the meat course was served
the talk had become general. Every one wished to hear Mrs. Trenton
and she met in a fashion of her own the questions that were directed
at her. Evidently she was used to being questioned and she answered
indifferently, sometimes disdainfully, or turned the question upon the
inquirer.
Atwood was exerting himself to hold Grace’s attention. He had never
heard of Mary Graham Trenton till Miss Reynolds’s invitation sent him
to the newspapers for information. He was not sure now that he knew
just how she came to be a celebrity and with Grace beside him he didn’t
care.
“I’ve been wild to see you ever since that night we put on the little
sketch at Mac’s,” he said confidingly. “You were perfectly grand; never
saw a finer piece of good sportsmanship. I met Evelyn the next day and
we’ve talked about it ever since when we’ve been alone. But old Bob is
certainly sore! He’s really a good fellow, you know; but he was off his
game that night. You scored big with Evelyn. She was really hurt when
you refused her invitation to dinner. I was to be in the party--begged
for an invitation; I swear I did! Please let me pull a party pretty
soon--say at the Country Club, and ask the Cummingses. Really I’m
respectable! I’ve got regular parents and aunts and everything.”
“We’ll have to consider that. Please listen; this is growing
interesting.”
“My point, Mrs. Trenton,” Professor Grayling was saying, “is just this:
Your reform programme only touches the top of the social structure
without regard to the foundation and the intermediate framework. In
your ‘Clues to a New Social Order’ you consider how things might be--a
happy state of things if the transition could be effected suddenly.
Granting that what you would accomplish is desirable or essential to
the general happiness of mankind, we can’t just pick out the few things
we are particularly interested in and set them up alone. They’d be sure
to topple over.”
“Oh, that!” Mrs. Trenton replied; and then as though aware that
something more was expected of her she went on: “But a lot of changes
have come in--in what you scientific economists would call the less
important things. Just now I’m laying stress on an equal wage for
men and women for the same labor. That I think more important than
such things as more liberal divorce laws, though I favor both. As
to divorce”--she gave her characteristic shrug,--“we all know that
more liberal laws came as the result of changing conditions--the
new attitude toward marriage and all that. We’re in the midst of a
tremendous social evolution.”
“May I come in right here for a moment, Mrs. Trenton?” asked Dr.
Ridgely. “You plead in your book for a change of existing laws to make
marriage dissoluble at the will or whim of the contracting parties;
children to be turned over to the State--a direct blow at the family.
Do you really think that desirable?” he ended smilingly.
“Dear me! That idea didn’t originate with me,” she replied. “I merely
went into it a little more concretely perhaps.”
Again, her curious vacant stare, followed in an instant by a gesture,
the slightest lifting and closing of one of her graceful hands as
though her thoughts, having ranged infinity, had brought back
something it was not necessary in her immediate surroundings to
disclose.
“But,” the minister insisted, “would such a solution be wise? Do you,
honestly, think it desirable?”
“It’s coming; it’s inevitable!” she answered quickly.
“How many women can you imagine driving up to a big barracks and
checking their babies? How strong is the maternal instinct?” asked
Judge Sanders.
“Most mothers don’t know how to care for their children,” said Mrs.
Trenton, bending forward to glance at the speaker. Sanders was a big
man with a great shock of iron-gray hair. He was regarding Mrs. Trenton
with the bland smile that witnesses always found disconcerting.
“Well, that may be true,” he said, “but the poor old human race has
survived their ignorance a mighty long time.”
The laughter at this retort was scattering and tempered by the obvious
fact that Mrs. Trenton was not wholly pleased by it.
Jimmie Atwood was hoping that there would be a row. A row among
high-brows would be something to talk about when he went to the
University Club the next day for lunch and an afternoon of sniff.
“The idea is, I take it,” he said with his funny squeak, “that
there would be no aunts or in-laws; just plain absolute freedom for
everybody. Large marble orphan asylums all over the country. Spanking
machines and everything scientific!”
“You’ve got exactly the right idea,” cried Mrs. Trenton.
“Clubs for women and clubs for men; everybody would live in a club.
That _would_ be jolly!” Atwood continued, delighted that he had gained
the attention of the guest of honor.
“Has anybody here,” began Grayling, “ever watched a bunch of college
boys listening to a phonograph record of Patti singing ‘Home, Sweet
Home?’ Well, I have and you could cut the gloom with a knife. Home is
still sweet to most of us.”
“I’d be awfully sorry to miss the weddings we have at the parsonage,”
said Mrs. Ridgely;--“trusting young souls who pop in at all hours to be
married. They’re all _sure_ they’re going to live happy forever after.
Miss Durland, it’s your generation that’s got to solve the problem.
Maybe you have the answer.”
“Oh, I think weddings are _beautiful_!” Grace answered, feeling the
eyes of the company upon her. The girlish ardor she threw into her
words won her a laugh of sympathy.
“Don’t let them intimidate you,” said Mrs. Trenton with an indulgent
smile. “Miss Reynolds has been telling me that you’re a University girl
and you ought to be sound on the great questions if Professor Grayling
hasn’t spoiled you!”
“No one could spoil Grace,” Grayling protested.
Grace pondered, anxious for Miss Reynolds’s sake to say nothing stupid.
She was the youngest member of the company; they were merely trying in
a friendly spirit to bring her into the talk and no wise deliverance
would be expected of her.
“I wouldn’t dare speak for all my generation,” she said, “but something
_has_ occurred to me. Our elders scold us too much! It isn’t at all
pleasant to be told that we’re terribly wicked; that we haven’t
any of the fine qualities of our parents and grandparents. We hear
nothing except how times have changed; well, we didn’t change them! I
positively refuse to be held responsible for changing anything! I took
the world just as I found it.”
She had spoken quickly, with the ring of honest protest in her voice,
and she was abashed when Judge Sanders clapped his hands in approval.
“That’s the truest word I’ve heard on that subject,” he said heartily.
“The responsibility is on us old folks if our children are not orderly,
disciplined, useful members of society.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” added Dr. Ridgely.
“Aren’t you the Miss Durland that John Moore talks about?” Mrs. Sanders
asked. “I thought so! Isn’t John a wonderful fellow? Since he went into
Mr. Sanders’s office we’ve seen him a good deal at our house. He’s so
simple and honest and gives promise of great things.”
“I’m very stupid,” said Sanders; “I didn’t realize that I had met the
paragon Moore brags about so much; but I might have known it!”
He began describing Moore, and told the whole table how, as trustee of
the University, he had become acquainted with the young man and was so
struck by his fine qualities that he had taken him into his office. He
related some of the familiar anecdotes of Moore and called upon Grace
for others. Grace told her stories well, wholly forgetting herself in
her enthusiasm. Suddenly her gaze fell upon Mrs. Trenton, whose lips
were parted in a smile of well-bred inattention. Grace became confused,
stammered, cut short a story she was telling illustrative of John’s
kindness to a negro student whom he had nursed through a long illness.
Apparently neither John nor his philanthropic impulses interested the
author of “Clues to a New Social Order”; or she was irritated at being
obliged to relinquish first place at the table. Miss Reynolds, quick
to note the bored look on her guest’s face, tactfully brought her again
into the foreground. Grace was startled a moment later, when, as the
talk again became general, Sanders remarked:
“I believe I’ve met your husband, Mrs. Trenton. He’s a friend of Mr.
Thomas Kemp, one of our principal manufacturers.”
“Yes?” she replied carelessly. “I think I’ve heard Mr. Trenton speak
of an Indianapolis client of that name. He visits your city I know,
on professional employments. Indeed his business keeps him in motion
most of the time; but I can’t complain; I’m a good deal of a gad-about
myself! I wired for Mr. Trenton’s address to his New York office the
other day, hoping I might be able to see him somewhere. It’s possible
he may turn up here. There’s a case for you, Dr. Ridgely! The reason my
marriage is so successful is because of the broad freedom Mr. Trenton
and I allow each other. We haven’t met since--Heaven knows when!”
A slight hint of bravado in her tone suggested an anxiety to establish
herself in the minds of the company as the possessor of a wider freedom
and a nobler tolerance than other wives. The other wives at the table
were obviously embarrassed if not displeased by her declaration. It
seemed to Grace that the air of the room chilled perceptibly.
She found herself resenting Mrs. Trenton’s manner of speaking of her
husband. Trenton, she remembered, had always spoken of his wife in
kind terms. On the evening of their first meeting at The Shack he had
chivalrously taken upon himself the responsibility for the failure of
his marriage. He had spoken of Mrs. Trenton as a charming woman, but
Grace thought her singularly charmless. She was at no pains to make
herself agreeable to the company Miss Reynolds had assembled in her
honor. One thing was clear and Grace derived a deep satisfaction from
the reflection,--Mrs. Trenton not only didn’t love her husband, but she
was incapable of loving any one but herself. Grace, having accepted the
invitation to meet Mrs. Trenton with a sense that there was something
a little brazen in her going when Miss Reynolds believed her to be
a clean-hearted, high-minded girl, in bitterness of spirit yielded
to a mood of defiance. This woman had no right to be a burden and a
hindrance to the man she had married. It was her fault if he found in
another the love and the companionship she had denied or was incapable
of giving him.