“I wish now I'd been different,” Mrs. Condon said, standing in the door.
Her dress was not yet on, but her underthings were fully as elaborate
and shimmering as any gown could hope to be. “And above everything else,
I am sorry for the kind of mother you've had.” This was so unexpected,
the other's voice was so unhappy, that Linda was startled. She hurried
across the room and laid a slim palm on her mother's full bare arm.
“Don't say that,” Linda begged, distressed; “you've been the best in the
world.”
“You know nothing about it,” the elder returned, momentarily seated, her
hands clasped on her full silken lap. “But perhaps it's not too late.
You ought to go to a good school, where you'd learn everything, but
principally what a bad thoughtless mama you have.”
“I shouldn't stay a second in a place where they said that,” Linda
declared. A new apprehension touched her. “You're not really thinking of
sending me away!” she cried. “Why, you simply could not get along. You
know you couldn't! The maids never do up your dresses right; and you'd
be so lonely in the mornings you would nearly die.”
“That's true,” Mrs. Condon admitted wearily. “I would expire; but I was
thinking of you--you're only beginning life; and the start you'll get
with me is all wrong. Or, anyway, most people think so.”
“They are only jealous.”
“Will you go into the closet, darling, and pour out a teeny little sip
from my flask; mama feels a thousand years old this evening.”
Returning with the silver cup of the flask half full of pale pungent
brandy Linda could scarcely keep the tears from spilling over her
cheeks. She had never before felt so sad. Her mother hastily drank,
the stinging odor was transferred to her lips; and there was a palpable
recovery of her customary spirit.
“I don't know what gets over me,” she asserted. “I'm certain, from what
I've heard of them, that you wouldn't be a bit better off in one of
those fashionable schools for girls. Woman, young and older, were never
meant to be a lot together in one place. It's unnatural. They don't like
each other, ever, and it's all hypocritical and nasty. You will get more
from life, yes, and me. I'm honest, too honest for my own good, if the
truth was known.”
She rose and unconsciously strayed to the mirror over the mantel where
she examined her countenance in absorbed detail.
“My skin is getting soft like putty,” she remarked aloud to herself.
“The thing is, I've had my time and don't want to pay for it. Blondes
go quicker than dark women; you ought to last a long while, Linda.” Mrs.
Condon had turned, and her tone was again almost complaining, almost
ill-natured. Linda considered this information with a troubled face. It
was quite clear that it made her mother cross. “I've seen men stop and
look at you right now, too, and you nothing more than a slip fourteen
years old. Of course, when I was fifteen I had a proposal; but I was
very forward; and somehow you're different--so dam' serious.”
She couldn't help it, Linda thought, if she was serious; she really had
a great deal to think about, their income among other things. If she
didn't watch it, pay the bills every three months when it arrived, her
mother would never have a dollar in the gold mesh bag. Then, lately, the
dresses the elder threatened to buy were often impossible; Linda learned
this from the comments she heard after the wearing of evening affairs
sent home against her earnest protests. They were, other women more
discreetly gowned had agreed, ridiculous.
Linda calmly realized that in this her judgment was superior to her
mother's. In other ways, too, she felt she was really the elder; and her
dismay at the possibility of going away to school had been mostly made
up of the realization of how much her mother's well-being was dependent
on her.
Mrs. Condon, finishing her dressing in the bedroom, at times called out
various injunctions, general or immediate. “Tell them to have a taxi
at the door for seven sharp. Have you talked to that little girl in the
black velvet?” Linda hadn't and made a mental note to avoid her more
pointedly in the future. “Get out mother's carriage boots from the
hall closet; no, the others--you know I don't wear the black with coral
stockings. They come off and the fur sticks to my legs. It will be very
gay to-night; I hope to heaven Ross doesn't take too much again.” Linda
well remembered that the last time Ross had taken too much her mother's
Directoire wrap had been completely torn in half. “There, it is all
nonsense about my fading; I look as well as I ever did.”
Mrs. Condon stood before her daughter like a large flame-pink tulle
flower. Her bright gold hair was constrained by black gauze knotted
behind, her bare shoulders were like powdered rosy marble and the
floating skirts gathered in a hand showed marvelously small satin-tied
carriage boots. Indeed Linda's exclamation of delight was entirely
frank. She had never seen her mother more radiant. The cunningly applied
rouge, the enhanced brilliancy of her long-lashed eyes, had perfectly
the illusion of unspent beauty.
“Do stay down-stairs after dinner and play,” the elder begged. “And if
you want to go to the theatre, ask Mr. Bendix, at the desk, to send
you with that chauffeur we have had so much. I positively forbid your
leaving the hotel else. It's a comfort after all, that you are serious.
Kiss mama--”
However, she descended with her mother in the elevator; there was a more
public caress; and the captain in the Chinese dining-room placed Linda
at a small table against the wall. There she had clams--she adored
iced clams--creamed shrimps and oysters with potatoes _bordure_,
alligator-pear salad and a beautiful charlotte cream with black walnuts.
After this she sedately instructed the captain what to sign on the back
of the dinner check--Linda Condon, room five hundred and seven--placed
thirty-five cents beside the finger-bowl for the waiter, and made her
way out to the news stand and the talkative girl who had it in charge.
Exhausting the possibilities of gossip, and deciding not to go out to
the theatre--in spite of the news girl's exciting description of a play
called “The New Sin”--she was walking irresolutely through the high
gilded and marble assemblage space when, unfortunately, she was captured
by Mr. Moses Feldt.