In the morning Mrs. Condon, with a very late breakfast-tray in bed, had
regained her usual cheerful manner. “The truth is,” she told Linda, “I'm
glad that Jasper man has gone. He had no idea of discretion; tired of
them anyhow.” Linda radiated happiness. This was the mother she loved
above all others. Her mind turned a little to the man who had talked to
her the night before. She wondered if he were better. His thin blanched
face, his eyes gleaming uncomfortably in smudges, recurred to her.
Perhaps he'd be down by the cigar-stand again. She went, presently, to
see, but the row of chairs was empty.
However, the neglected thick brown-covered magazine was still on the
ledge by which he had been sitting. There was a name on it, and while,
ordinarily, she couldn't read handwriting, this was so clear and
regular, but minutely small, that she was able to spell it out--Howard
Welles.
It disappointed her not to find him; at lunch she observed nearly every
one present, but still he was lost. He wasn't listening to the music
after dinner, nor below. A deep sense of disappointment grew within her.
Linda wanted to see him, hear him talk; at times a sharp hurt in the
shoulder he had grasped brought him back vividly. The next day it was
the same, and finally, diffidently, she approached the hotel desk. A
clerk she knew, Mr. Fiske, was rapidly sorting mail, and she waited
politely until he had finished.
“Well?” he asked.
“I found this down-stairs,” she said, giving him the magazine. “Perhaps
he'll want it.” Mr. Fiske looked at the written name, and then glanced
sharply at her. “No,” he told her brusquely, “he won't want it.” He
turned away with the magazine and left Linda standing irresolutely. She
wanted to ask if Mr. Welles were still at the Boscombe; if the latter
didn't want the magazine she'd love to have it, Linda couldn't tell why.
But the clerk went into the treasurer's office and she was forced to
move away.
Later, lingering inexplicably about the spot where she had heard so
many bewildering words, a very different man spoke to her. He, Linda
observed, was smoking a cigar, a good one, she was certain. He was
smallish and had a short bristling mustache and head partly bald.
His shoes were very shiny and altogether he had a look of prosperity.
“Hello, cutie!” he cried, capturing her arm. She responded listlessly.
The other produced a crisp dollar bill. “Do you see the chocolates in
that case?” he said, indicating the cigar-stand. “Well, get the best. If
they cost more, let me know. Our financial rating is number one.” Linda
answered that she didn't think she cared for any. “All right,” the man
agreed; “sink the note in the First National Ladies Bank, if you know
where that is.”
He engineered her unwillingly onto a knee. “How's papa?” he demanded. “I
suppose he will be here Saturday to take his family through the stores?”
She replied with dignity, “There is only my mother and me.”
At this information he exclaimed “Ah!” and touched his mustache with a
diminutive gold-backed brush from a leather case. “That's more than I
have,” he confided to her; “there is only myself. Isn't that sad? You
must be sorry for the lonely old boy.”
She wasn't. Probably he, too, had a wife somewhere; men were beastly. “I
guess your mother wants a little company at times herself?”
Linda, straining away from him, replied, “Oh, dear, no; there are just
packs of gentlemen whenever she likes. But she is tired of them all.”
She escaped and he settled his waistcoat.
“You mustn't run away,” he admonished her; “nice children don't. Your
mother didn't bring you up like that, I'm sure. She wouldn't like it.”
Linda hesitated, plainly conveying the fact that, if she were to wait,
he would have to say something really important.
“Just you two,” he deliberated; “Miss and Mrs. Jones.”
“Not at all,” Linda asserted shortly; “our name is Condon.”
“I wonder if you'd tell her this,” he went on: “a gentleman's here by
himself named Bardwell, who has seen her and admires her a whole lot.
Tell her he's no young sprig but he likes a good time all the better.
Dependable, too. Remember that, cutie. And he wouldn't presume if he had
a short pocket. He knows class when he sees it.”
“It won't do any good,” Linda assured him in her gravest manner. “She
said only this morning she was sick of them.”
“That was before dinner,” he replied cheerfully. “Things look different
later in the day. You do what I tell you.”
All this Linda dutifully repeated. Her mother was at the dressing-table,
rubbing cream into her cheeks, and she paused, surveying her reflection
in the mirror. “He was smoking a big cigar,” Linda added. The other
laughed. “What a sharp little thing you are!” she exclaimed. “A body
ought to be careful what they tell you.” She wiped off the cream and
rubbed a soft pinkish powder into her skin.
“He saw me, did he?” she apparently addressed the glass. “Admired me a
whole lot. Was he nice, Linda?” she turned. “Were his clothes right? You
must point him out to me to-night. But do it carefully, darling. No one
should notice. Your mother isn't on the shelf yet; she can hold her own,
even in the Boscombe, against the whole barnyard.”
Linda, at the entrance to the dining-room, whispered, “There he is.” But
immediately Mr. Bardwell was smiling and speaking to them.
“I had a delightful conversation with your little girl to-day,” he told
Mrs. Condon; “such a pretty child and well brought up.”
“And good, too,” her mother replied; “not a minute's trouble. The common
sense of the grown; you'd never believe it.”
“Why shouldn't I?” he protested gallantly. “Every reason to.” Mrs.
Condon blushed becomingly.
“She had to make up for a lot,” she sighed.
An hour or more after dinner Mrs. Randall stopped Linda in the hall
beyond the music. “Mama out?” she inquired brightly. “I thought Mr.
Jasper left this morning?”
Linda told her that Mr. Jasper had gone; she added nothing else.
“I must look at the register,” Mrs. Randall continued; “I really must.”
Obeying an uncontrollable impulse Linda half cried, “I'd like to see you
riding on a leopard!” A flood of misery enveloped her, and she hurried
up to the silence of her mother's deserted room.
V
It was on her fourteenth birthday that Linda noticed a decided change
in her mother; a change, unfortunately, that most of all affected
the celebrated good humors. In the first place Mrs. Condon spent
an increasingly large part of the day before the mirror of her
dressing-table, but without any proportionate pleasure; or, if there
was a proportion kept, it exhibited the negative result of a growing
annoyance. “God knows why they all show at once,” she exclaimed
discontentedly, seated--as customary--before the eminently truthful
reflection of a newly discovered set of lines. “I'm not old enough to
begin to look like a hag.”
“Oh, mother,” Linda protested, shocked, “you mustn't say such horrid
things about yourself. Why, you're perfectly lovely, and you don't seem
a speck older than you did years ago.”
The other, biting her full underlip at the unwelcome fact in turn biting
a full lower lip back at her, made no reply. Linda lingered for a moment
at her mother's ruffled pink shoulders; then, with a sigh, she turned to
the reception-room of their small suite at the Hotel Gontram. It was a
somber chamber furnished in red plush, with a complication of shades and
gray-white net curtains at long windows and a deep green carpet. There
was a fireplace, with a grate, supported by varnished oak pillars and
elaborate mantel and glass, a glittering reddish center-table with a
great many small odd shelves below, a desk with sheaves of hotel writing
paper and the telephone.
The Gontram was entirely different from the hotels at the lakes or
seashore or in the South. It was a solid part of a short block west of
Fifth Avenue in the middle of the city. Sherry's filled a corner with
its massive stone bulk and glimpses of dining-rooms with glittering
chandeliers and solemn gaiety, then impressive clubs and wide entrances
under heavy glass and metal, tall porters in splendid livery, succeeded
each other to the Hotel Gontram and the dull thunder of the elevated
trains beyond.
The revolving door, through which Linda sedately permitted herself to
be moved, opened into a high space of numerous columns and benches,
writing-desks and palms. At the back was the white room where, usually
alone, she had breakfast, while the dining-room, discreetly lighted,
was at the left. It was more interesting here than, for example, at
the Boscombe; people were always coming in or going, and there were
quantities of men. She watched them arriving with shoals of leather bags
in the brisk care of the bellboys, disappear into the elevator, and, if
it was evening, come down in dinner coats with vivid silk scarfs folded
over their white shirts.
The women were perpetually in street clothes or muffled in satin wraps;
Linda only regarded them when they were exceptional. Usually she was
intent on the men. It often happened that they returned her frank gaze
with a smile, or stopped to converse with her. Sometimes it was an actor
with a face dryly pink like a woman's from make-up; they were familiar
and pinched her cheeks, calling her endearing names in conscious echoing
voices as if they were quite hollow within. Then there were simply
business men, who never appeared to take off their derby hats, and spoke
to her of their little girls at home. She was entirely at ease with the
latter--so many of her mother's friends were similar--and critically
valued the details of their dress, the cigar-cases with or without gold
corners, the watch-chains with jeweled insignia, the cuff-links and
embroidered handkerchiefs.
If her mother approached while Linda was so engaged the elder would
linger with a faint smile, at which, now, the girl was conscious of a
growing impatience. She'd rise with dignity and, if possible, escape
with her parent from florid courtesies. This sense of annoyance
oppressed her, too, in the dining-room, where her mother, a cocktail in
her hand, would engage in long cheerful discussions with the captains or
waiters. Other women, Linda observed, spoke with complete indifference
and their attention on the _carte de jour_. Of course it was much more
friendly to be interested in the servants' affairs--they told her mother
about their wives and the number of their children, the difficulties of
bringing both ends together, and served her with the promptest care; but
instinctively Linda avoided any but the most formal contact.
She had to insist, as well, on paying the tips; for Mrs. Condon, her
sympathies engaged, was quite apt to leave on the table a five-dollar
bill or an indiscriminate heap of silver. “You are a regular little
Jew,” she would reply lightly to Linda's protests. This, the latter
thought, was unfair; for the only Jew she knew, Mr. Moses Feldt, an
acquaintance of their present period in New York, was quite the most
generous person she knew. “Certainly you don't take after your mama.”
After she said this she always paused with tight lips. It was charged
with the assumption that, while Linda didn't resemble her, she did
very much a mysterious and unfavorably regarded personage. Her father,
probably. More and more Linda wondered about him. He was dead, she knew,
but that, she began to see, was no reason for the positive prohibition
to mention him at all. Perhaps he had done something dreadful, with
money, and had disgraced them all. Yet she was convinced that this was
not so.
She had heard a great many uncomplimentary words applied to husbands,
most of which she had been unable to comprehend; and she speculated
blankly on them in her mother's connection. On the whole the women
agreed that they were remarkably stupid and transparent, they protested
that they understood and guided every move husbands made; and this
surely gave her father no opportunity for independent crime. She was
held from questioning not so much by her mother's command--at times she
calmly and successfully ignored that--as from its unfortunate effect on
the elder.
Mrs. Condon would burn with a generalized anger that sank to a
despondency fortified by the brandy flask. Straining embraces and tears,
painful to support, would follow, or more unbearable silliness. The old
difficulties with giggling or sympathetic chambermaid;--Linda couldn't
decide which was worse--then confronted her with the necessity for rigid
lies, misery, and the procuring of sums of money from the bag in the
top drawer. Altogether, and specially with the fresh difficulties of
her mother's unaccountable irritation and apprehensions, things were
frightfully complicated.
It was late afternoon in November, and the electric lights were on;
however, they were lighted when they rose, whenever they were in the
rooms, for it was always gloomy if not positively dark; the bedroom
looked into a deep exterior well and the windows of the other chamber
opened on an uncompromising blank wall. Yet Linda, now widely learned in
such settings, rather liked her present situation. They had occupied the
same suite before, for one thing; and going back into it had given her a
sense of familiarity in so much that always shifted.
Linda, personally, had changed very little; she was taller than four
years before, but not a great deal; she was, perhaps, more graceful--her
movements had become less sudden--more assured, the rapidly maturing
qualities of her mind made visible; and she had gained a surprising
repose.
Now, for example, she sat in a huge chair cushioned with black leather
and thought, with a frowning brow, of her mother. It was clear that the
latter was obviously worried about--to put it frankly--her face. Her
figure, she repeatedly asserted, could be reasoned with; she had always
been reconciled to a certain jolly stoutness, but her face, the
lines that appeared about her eyes overnight, fairly drove her to hot
indiscreet tears. She had been to see about it, Linda knew; and returned
from numerous beauty-parlors marvelously rejuvenated--for the evening.
She had been painted, enameled, vibrated, massaged; she had had electric
treatment, rays and tissue builders; and once she had been baked. To-day
the toilet table would be loaded with milkweed, cerates and vanishing
cream; tomorrow they would all be swept away, given to delighted
chambermaids, while Mrs. Condon declared that, when all was said, cold
water and a rough towel was nature's way.
This afternoon, apparently everything, including hope, had failed. She
was as cross as cross. From the manner in which she spoke it might have
been Linda's fault. The worst of it was that even the latter saw that
nothing could be done. Her mother was growing--well, a little tired in
appearance. Swift tears gathered in Linda's eyes. She hadn't been quite
truthful in that reassuring speech of hers. She set herself to the
examination of various older women with whom she had more or less lately
come in contact. How had they regarded and met the loss of whatever good
looks they had possessed?
It was terribly mixed up, but, as she thought about it, it seemed to her
that the world of women was divided into two entirely different groups,
the ones men liked, and who had such splendid parties; and the ones
who sat together and gossiped in sharp lowered voices. She hoped
passionately that her mother would not become one of the latter for a
long long while. But eventually it seemed that there was no escape
from the circle of brilliantly dressed creatures with ruined faces who
congregated in the hotels and whispered and nodded in company until they
went severally to bed.
The great difference between one and the other, of course, was the favor
of men. Their world revolved about that overwhelming fact. Her mother
had informed her of this on a hundred occasions and in countless ways;
but more by her actions, her present wretchedness, than by speech. It
was perfectly clear to Linda that nothing else mattered. She was even
beginning, in a vague way, to think of it in connection with herself;
but still most of her preoccupation was in her mother. She decided
gravely that a great deal, yet, could be done. For instance, lunch
to-day:
Her mother had given her a birthday celebration at Henri's, the famous
confectioner but a door or two from their hotel, and at the end, when
a plate of the most amazing and delightful little cakes had been set on
the table, the elder had eaten more than half. Afterwards she had sworn
ruefully at her lack of character, begging Linda--in a momentary return
of former happy companionship--never to let her make such a silly pig
of herself again. Then she got so tired, Linda continued her mental
deliberations; if she could only rest, go away from cities and resorts
for a number of months, the lines in turn would soon vanish.
The elder moved impatiently, with a fretful exclamation, in the inner
room; from outside came the subdued dull ceaseless clamor of New York.
Formerly it had frightened Linda; but her dread had become a wordless
excitement at the thought of so much just beyond the windows; her hands
grew cold and her heart suddenly pounded, destroying the vicarious image
of her mother.